


You are a Runner and I am My Father's Son

by Canon_Is_Relative



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Academy Era, Daddy Issues, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Gary Mitchell is an ass in this and every reality, Jim grew up on a farm, M/M, Mommy Issues, Smart Kirk, Starfleet Academy, and his Grandma is awesome, ex-wife issues, give Winona a break she's had a hard life, jim and bones have friends besides each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-04
Updated: 2014-03-05
Packaged: 2018-01-14 12:18:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 24,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1266289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canon_Is_Relative/pseuds/Canon_Is_Relative
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two dynamic and stubborn individuals engage in the struggle for friendship and intimacy set against the backdrop of The Academy, where the Federation's Best and Brightest come together to reach for a better future...</p><p> ...or maybe something a little like that only slightly less daytime telly. </p><p>Jim Kirk and Leonard McCoy can't figure out if they're fascinated or irritated with each other. Drinking, discussions and general debauchery ensues. Spans first semester and winter break of their first year at the academy together.</p><p>Complete in ten chapters and a porny epilogue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2009 for the Kirk/McCoy fic exchange ([roundup can be found here](http://kirk-mccoy.livejournal.com/522273.html)) and originally posted [at my Dreamwidth](http://canon-is-relative.dreamwidth.org/5474.html)
> 
> Original Prompt: I'd really like to see something set during the Academy years, but without Kirk and McCoy being instant BFFs. I still want them to end up as best friends (or more, it'd be great if they got together, too), but I'd like to see them get there gradually and having to work for it.
> 
> Title is from [the ultimate reboot!Jim/Bones song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y45HYmX5mw), by Wolf Parade.

“Bones! Hey, Doctor—Bones!”

McCoy, on his way to class and engrossed in conversation with his lab partners, didn’t stop or look around until a heavy hand fell on his shoulder and he jumped. Looking around he saw the kid from the shuttle, the Iowa boy with the quizzical brows who’d sucked down half his flask like it was water.

“’Bones’?” McCoy repeated, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah, Bones—sorry, I forgot your name, that’s what I call you in my head. All you got left, that’s what you said.” The kid was panting slightly, clearly he’d just sprinted across the quad to catch up with them. McCoy stared at him. The kid rolled his eyes after a minute. “What, I forget your name, you forget me entirely? Real cool.” He shifted his bag and extended a hand. “It’s Jim, we met on the shuttle ride here. You threatened to throw up on me.”

McCoy scowled and broke off the handshake. “I never expected to see you again,” he said gruffly, glancing towards his partners who were waiting for him a few steps away, looking skeptical.

“Why not? Campus isn’t that big.” Jim followed his gaze, eyes sweeping the three medical students. “Oh, I get it, cuz you’re a doctor, not a cadet.”

“No, because I expected you to wash out before the end of prep.”

Jim actually looked surprised. “Me? Wash out? What are you talkin’ about?”

McCoy rolled his eyes again, irritation mingling with amusement as he watched the kid’s very mobile face react to his words. “I didn’t forget you, Jim, and despite the Aldebaran whiskey I remember a good bit of what you told me. Bar brawls and tail-chasing don’t exactly an officer make.”

“Well,” said Jim, clapping McCoy on the shoulder. “At least you didn’t forget me. Come out with me tonight, some friends are having a party in Archer Hall.”

“Tonight? It’s Tuesday!”

“Yeah, but we’ve been here exactly a month. Reason enough for a party, right?”

“Leonard, we’re going to be late,” Christy called out, giving Kirk a look that clearly said _Back off, kid._ A look that was completely disregarded and returned with a smirk and an appraising glance before the kid refocused on McCoy.

“Leonard. I knew it was something like that. McCoy, right? I think I might keep calling you ‘Bones,’ though. Okay, okay yeah go to class. But remember, Archer Hall, tonight!” Jim called after him, even as he was walking away.

“Don’t you have homework to do?” McCoy growled over his shoulder, rejoining his partners.


	2. Chapter 2

Jim was having a _great_ day. It was finally cooling down in San Francisco, he was in the best shape of his life, his classes were goddamn _fascinating_ and midterms had just breezed by and he’d barely noticed—well, exo had been a stretch but he’d made it after a couple of all-nighters. 

Oh, and the _girls,_ he thought as he crossed the quad and caught a familiar glimpse of dark skin and darker hair. He smirked as Uhura caught him staring. She looked exasperated and put her arm around the Orion girl beside her, leading her quickly away. Now _there_ was a sight that made Jim’s heart race as he forgot to breathe for a moment. 

When the pair were out of sight he chuckled to himself. There was nothing like this in Iowa, he thought for the twelfth time that day. Although he had to admit that when it came to guys he preferred the Iowa-farmboy look to the whole Starfleet GI thing, he considered it a pretty even trade. His gaze drifted across the street, where another familiar face snagged his attention.

“Hey!” he called, impulsively lengthening his stride. “Hey, McCoy!” He felt his face split into a grin as he jogged towards the doctor. “I remembered your name,” he said, encouraged by the fact that Bones—McCoy—had stopped walking to wait for him. “That means you have to come have a drink with me. It’s even Friday this time.”

“Okay, kid,” the older man grunted, already walking again. “You’re buying.”

Jim was surprised by his ready acquiescence and took a moment to study his face as they walked in silence down the street. He looked…he looked livid. Or what livid would look like if all the rage was spent and no energy was left to maintain it.

McCoy—Bones—went straight for a place Jim had never been in before and he followed as Bones ducked in the low doorway and made for the bar. Jim took a moment to look around before sitting. It was nicer than any place he’d ever gotten shitfaced in, and he suddenly felt very uncomfortable as he realized there were _professors_ in here. Feeling very much like the kid at the adult’s table, he slid onto a stool between Bones and Captains Maltese and Becker who were arguing about something Jim guessed either had to do with the new transporter technology that was being ranted about on all the feeds, or the plot of one of those convoluted BBC dramas everyone always seemed to be drooling over.

“Transporters,” Bones muttered, by which Jim deduced his original assumption had been correct. "Why don’t they just throw me in a vaporizer and let my DNA unravel in peace." He suppressed a shudder as the bartender poured him a drink.

“Ah, same for me,” Jim said when the bartender looked at him, then sighed and held out his thumb for the ID print. “Do I really look that much younger than you?” he complained to the doctor.

“Yeah, well, you never been married.” Bones gulped the whiskey down and motioned for another.

Not to be outdone Jim slammed his and tried not to pull a face as the bartender poured two more.

“That what’s up? Wife get custody of another planet?”

“Ex-wife,” Bones snarled, “and yeah. My whole damn world.” He paused, glass in hand, studying the swirl of the amber contents before answering. “My daughter was supposed to come out here to visit me for Thanksgiving. The ex-wife just wrote me that she’s not coming now. ‘Joanna doesn’t want to come,’ she said.”

 _Shit, this is way over my head,_ Jim thought, licking his lips and sipping his whiskey to stall. “Well, what did she mean by ‘doesn’t want to’? Maybe your kid—Joanna?—knows you’re afraid of flying and is scared herself. Kids pick up on shit like that, you know?”

“Oh, yeah? What do you know about kids?”

Jim shrugged. “I was one.”

“Yeah?” Bones glared at him. “Still are, far as I can tell. Doesn’t make you an expert.”

“Right,” Jim glared right back. All he’d wanted was a drink. “I’m just a kid whose dad died in space and whose mom wouldn’t set foot on anything that flies for twelve years after. And she was a Starfleet officer.”

The doc’s glare morphed into wary interest. “What’s your surname, again?”

“It’s Kirk,” Jim sighed, resigned.

“As in, son of George Kirk of the _Kelvin_?”

“The one—and the only,” Jim toasted his glass, his old high school catchphrase falling too easily from his tongue. He looked at Bones over the rim as he drank, half-expecting to find either the awkward embarrassment or open pity that his smarter—okay, honestly, slightly-less-stupid—classmates and teachers would display whenever he mentioned his father. Instead he found only grudging respect.

“Kid born the day her husband dies,” he muttered, turning back to the bar. “And I thought _my_ marriage was rough.”

“If you’re gonna start asking me about my daddy-issues—“

Bones interrupted him with a finger in his chest. “I’m a doctor. Not a psychiatrist. Can I get another down here?” he called. “Leave the bottle,” he added when his glass had been refilled. “Daddy issues,” he scoffed. “I hope my daughter grows up to be just like you.”

“Cheers,” Jim replied, and they drank in silence for what felt like several long minutes.

“Your mom doin’ okay these days?” Bones asked suddenly, gruffly, studying the taps behind the bar and not looking at Jim.

Jim felt his eyebrows almost fly off his face and he coughed, his throat constricting around the last swallow of whiskey. He ran his tongue over his teeth and stared hard at the doctor, searching for words to disguise the sudden swelling in his chest.

“Yeah,” he said, finally. Bones still didn’t look at him so he, too, turned his head, pretending to ponder the array of tap beers in front of him. He licked his lips and answered. “Yeah. She’s doing all right. She, um, she lives with my grandparents in Iowa. My father’s parents. She runs their farm.”

“A farm?” McCoy asked, looking skeptical. “Well, I guess that’s about as far from working in space as it’s possible to get. Here’s to digging in the dirt, I guess,” he added, raising his glass.

“To the Earth,” Jim toasted, feeling it fall away beneath his feet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Regarding Jim saying he's the "one and only" son of George Kirk: I had convoluted headcanon that got cut out of the final draft whereby George Samuel was Winona's son by another man. It was born from my inability to forgive George for not saying something like "And tell Georgey I love him" when talking to Winona in his final moments, so I...gave George Samuel a different dad. I was ridiculous back in 2009, forgive me.


	3. Chapter 3

“Okay, run it now doc,” the kid called over the hum of whatever the enormous black box in front of him was.

Jim leaned against the doorframe, content to watch the scene unfold.

From out of sight he heard McCoy’s answering grunt. “Now?” he asked after a moment.

“Yeah, I think that oughta do…” the lab tech froze in the act of pushing his fair hair out of his eyes, leaving a streak of grease across his face. “Oh, shit,” he said softly as a cloud of smoke billowed out from under the box, filling the room with a metallic stench and the doctor’s cursing.

The tech slapped a panel on the machine’s side and it switched off, its soft hum replaced by the whoosh of the air recyclers as they kicked in to filter the smoke out of the room. Jim almost laughed as he watched the doctor stalk out from wherever he’d been working to glare at the pale-faced tech.

“ _That oughta do it_ my Georgia ass,” he growled, stopping in front of him. “That’s it Novak, call a goddamn techie in here. You _don’t_ know how to fix this thing.”

“Okay, doc, okay! I’ll call someone!” Novak raised his hands, palm out in surrender. “If you’d just let me do it instead of trying to help…” he grumbled under his breath as Bones walked away. Glancing over his shoulder to make sure the doctor had really left, Novak bent over the machine once more, fidgeting with dials and muttering under his breath.

Jim chuckled, and the kid jumped about a foot. “Sorry.”

“You _don’t_ ,” Novak said, recovering his breath, “sneak up on a man while he’s fine-tuning a stasis chamber.”

“Fine-tuning, huh. Looks more like you're testing the smoke detectors.”

Novak threw his hands up, looking put out. “Go talk to McCoy if you can’t say anything nice to me. You two can form a little club.”

“Actually I was looking for him. It okay if I come in?”

Novak shrugged, turning back to his work. “I don’t care. He’s not being helpful, might as well distract him while I try to get this done.”

Jim grinned and strode across the lab to the door he’d seen the doctor disappear through. It was locked and when he rapped on it a voice barked out, “Are you clean?”

“Last time I checked,” Jim shot back.

There was a pause, a couple of steps, and a panel in the opaque door brightened and he could see Bones’s face peering out at him. “Kirk? What are you doing here?”

“I came to ask you something. Can I come in?”

“No. This is a sterile chamber and I’m not gonna go through de-con again. What is it?”

Jim blinked, changing tactics. He’d planned to go in smooth and charming, but this might work too. “Well, I’ve got this comparative exobiology class and it’s kicking my ass. I was wondering if you’d help me out.”

Bones’s eyebrows shot into his hairline. “The hell you think I’d do that for? I’m a doctor, Kirk, I’m busy.”

Jim shrugged, leaning against the door. “I looked you up. The final’s going to have a whole section covering your humanoid cerebral cortex grafting technique, and to be honest I don’t get it, or its ‘implications on my choices as a future commanding officer,’ so I thought I’d ask the man himself.”

The man himself looked taken aback. He glanced over his shoulder, rubbed the back of his neck. “We’ve got a lot of stuff going on in here, Jim,” he said after a minute. “I’ve got my own exams to study for.”

Jim nodded, only grinning on the inside. “I understand. Just thought I’d ask. Well if you find a minute, I’m free every night this week and I’ve got a bottle of Romulan ale just waiting to make an evening of brain-tissue-analysis fly by.” He raised a hand in a friendly salute and turned away, counting down the seconds. Five - four - three - two - one. The door to the decontamination chamber swished open. He turned around with a mild grin on his lips.

“Romulan ale?” Bones was leaning around the door, brows furrowed.

“Mm-hm.”

A brief silence as the doctor considered him. “Where’s your room?”


	4. Chapter 4

McCoy lifted his fifth toxic-blue shot, squinting at it. “Y’know this stuff’s illegal, Jim.” He definitely was not slurring.

“I always thought it kinda looked like…like a liquid Andorian. Cheers." The kid clinked his glass against McCoy’s and downed it. Ran his tongue around his teeth, over his lips. Bones—McCoy, or whatever his name was—followed suit.

“That one tasted different from the last one,” Bones muttered, wiping a wrist across his mouth, thinking his lips probably looked like they belonged to a kid with a blue Popsicle. “All right. Tell me what an _axon_ is.”

“Whaaat?” Jim drew the word out, his head lolling back against the sofa, his forehead pressed into the McCoy's thigh as he twisted to look up at him. Jim was half-sprawled on the floor, books and PADDs and charts spread out around him. “It’s almost one in the goddamn. I don’t wanna talk ‘bout axons ennymore.”

“Seein’ as your test’s in three days an’ you consistently confuse axons and dendrites, which honest Jim-boy I dunno how you got outta high school like that, I think you outta do as I say.”

“Do as you say?” Jim rolled around to leer at the doctor sitting above him. “That sounds fun. I di’nt know you were inta that.”

Bones felt himself flush but rolled his eyes anyway. The mouth on this kid was unbelievable. Made him want to lock up his daughter till she was thirty-five. He looked down into Jim's upside-down face, a smirk where his eyes should be and a chapped, blurry mess of a mouth. Jim's tongue darted out once more to lick at the deep indentation in his bottom lip his teeth had been worrying all night; a wound that would have healed already if he would just stop tonguing it.

“I mean,” Jim was babbling, holding the bottle up to the light and sloshing the much-reduced contents around inside, “it’s cool if you are. It’s just I’m not too good at followin’ directions. ‘Cept when I’m wasted like this. What’s the word…” he dropped the bottle to the carpet with a muffled _thunk._ “Pliant.” He laughed, low in his throat. The top of his head was once more nudging against the outside of McCoy’s thigh, fingers probably-not-accidentally brushing against the back of his bare ankle.

Bones wasn’t quite sure but it sounded like the soggy cadet in front of him was propositioning him. It was a peculiar feeling. He hadn’t been propositioned in years. And he’d never been propositioned by a blonde army-brat playboy with the most ridiculous set of DSLs on campus. He rubbed his forehead in consternation. When the hell had _DSL_ even become part of his vocabulary? And why _him_? He knew why the kid had come to him—he’d needed to pick his brain for the exam. Fine. But why more than that? The ale was payment enough; what was he playing at, saying things like that to him, after all of three previous encounters, none of which had caught McCoy at anything like his best. He sighed, a harsh sound in his own ears, when his memory lit on the night at the bar when he’d growled out his problems over an entire bottle of Jameson. Why anyone would come back for more of _that_ was utterly beyond him.

“Y’awright, doctor?” Jim asked with something like concern, blue eyes gazing upside-down at him. “You hadda lot. Maybe’s water time?”

“Hmm,” McCoy agreed, glad for the excuse to push himself off the couch, make his way to the sink. When he turned back around, cup in hand, he saw Jim had pushed himself up onto the two-seater couch and was sprawling, knees dangling over the arm, leaving only his lap for Bones to return to. Sighing, he leaned against the sink.

“This is some good shit,” Jim mused. “Those Romulans sure know what’s up.”

Bones regarded the kid in front of him as he sipped his water. Narrowed his eyes as his brain made connections that hadn’t occurred to him before; _Romulan ale, Romulans, George Kirk_. “M’kinda surprised you drink the stuff,” he said quietly, “all things considered.”

Jim’s heels, which had been beating a soft tattoo against the side of the couch, fell still. Through the silence and the boozey haze, Bones knew he’d fucked up.

“All things considered?” Jim asked, soft, almost sober.

Bones shrugged, gulping back the rest of the water. There was more in the cup that he’d thought and he almost choked on it.

Jim sat up, propping his elbows back on the arm, pulling his legs in to his chest. “You wanna ‘laborate on that, doctor?”

“Not really,” McCoy answered, speaking to Jim’s left shoulder. “Jus’ a dumb thought.”

“Yeah. Was. ‘Till you hadta go an’ say it.” Jim looked away, snorting in disgust. “Never mind. G’night. Thanks for your help.”

Bones looked at him for a minute, then set down his cup and walked over to the couch, gathering up his things in silence. He could feel Jim’s glare on the back of his neck.

“Good night,” he said, and walked towards the door. Stopped as Jim let out an irritated growl.

“Can’t a guy have a drink without people makin’ remarks?” he muttered. Bones turned to look at him. The kid was directing a sullen, accusatory stare towards him, but not really looking at him. Talking to someone, hoards of someones, who weren’t really there. “Thought you’d be cool. Thought you _got_ it. First person to say to me, to my face, ‘gee that musta been shitty for your mom.’ Cuz yea, it sucks for me, but lotsa kids grow up without their dads. Shit, Gary Mitchell lost both his parents that day. But no, people are always makin’ it all about me, saying it must be so hard for me. But it’s not like _I_ can remember it, not like _I_ had to live through it and somehow try to keep on living.” He slumped back against the arm of the couch, fingers picking at a fraying cushion. _That’s the way it is,_ his posture seemed to say. “The thing _makes_ it hard is people asking that damn question all the time.”

McCoy stood silently through his rant, wondering vaguely how many years it’d been brewing inside Jim’s chest. He wanted to point out that he hadn’t asked that question, hadn’t said any of the things Jim was attributing to People Like Him, wanted to clarify that all he’d meant was that he was surprised, all things considered, that Jim would support the Romulans, financially, by engaging in their black market. But it was probably useless. Jim was angry and drunk, and that kind of river of hurt doesn’t respond well to logic and once it’s flowing it’s near impossible to dam. Ask McCoy about _his_ daddy-issues some time, he’ll tell you it’s true. So he ducked his head over a mute apology, pressed his thumb to the door pad, and left.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visuals for the OCs in this chapter:
> 
> Haven = [Kandyse McClure](http://static4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130722160846/tvdatabase/images/7/7c/Kandyse_McClure.jpg)  
> Meg = [Jes](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oLAaOLtVRS8/UX1Xr29Yw8I/AAAAAAAAJSo/kyrdnQj3adU/s640/sleeveless.jpg) ([themilitantbaker blogger](http://www.themilitantbaker.com/)) when she's blonde  
> Gary Mitchell = [Eddie Redmayne](http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/77/7f/55/777f552828a08c72b3ad4cd0ca042234.jpg) (not an OC but my take on him)  
> Julian = John Cho. Awkward, I know, but I can't unsee it. [Here he is](http://www.contactmusic.com/pics/lb/star_trek_photocall_170409/karl_urban_5279607.jpg) making questionable fashion choices with McCoy.
> 
> Thanks are owed to Jessofthebugs for letting my borrow two characters from her Joanna McCoy epistolary series and advising me on Jo's anatomically correct cussing. If you never read [Dear Daddy](http://awfully-clever.livejournal.com/tag/series%3Adear%20daddy), go do it now.

McCoy woke up with a hangover the size of Kirk's ego and the taste of his own foot in his mouth. 

He shrugged it off. It wasn’t as if he and Kirk were anything like friends, wasn’t like he was losing something significant by walking away from the kid. By the time Thursday, the day of Jim’s exo exam, rolled around, McCoy had all but dismissed the incident from his mind as he settled into an all-nighter in the lab.

“Let me know when your resonance scanner’s done with those samples,” Novak called to him over the sound of his music. McCoy nodded, not even trying to make himself heard. Usually trying to work with other people’s music on irritated the hell out of him, but Novak had pretty good taste, for an adolescent. And it was going to be a good night—he could tell. The project they were working on for their Advanced Microbial Analysis class, isolating and sterilizing contaminated cells in six different samples of humanoid brain tissue, would be child’s play for them. That’s why they’d put it off so long, preferring to do it in one long go after they’d finished their more taxing assignments.

A light flashed and he opened the door to the stasis chamber, the one Novak has miraculously managed to fix the day Kirk had come to find him, and removed a tray. He checked the labels, transferred data from the readout and the electron resonance scanner to his PADD, and carried the tubes over to Novak, who turned his music down to talk to him.

“These are ready for the phoretic analyzer," McCoy said. “Human and Andorian samples show positive, Tellarite negative and Vulcan inconclusive. See what you make of ‘em. Klingon and Orion are still cooking.”

“Righto,” Novak said, extending his freckled arms to receive the tray. “Should cross-check the stasis data through the program I dumped on your tricorder. See if anything useful shows up in the dendritic branch formations.”

McCoy nodded, turning on his heel and marching back to his station. He sat down, stood up and shucked off his lab coat, sat down again and picked up the medical tricorder Novak had been reprogramming. The bluesy song keening from Novak’s speakers drew to a close and in the brief silence between tracks he heard the door to the lab hiss open. He turned to see Jim Kirk walk in, casual as you please, hands in the pockets of his jeans.

“Hi, Novak,” he greeted the kid, who turned his music down even more and threw a wave in his direction. Was there anyone on campus, in San Francisco, even, that Jim didn’t know? “Bones!” he continued, pacing up beside him, eyes roving over the readouts and samples and flashing equipment that covered his workspace, finally coming to rest on the doctor’s face. “Where were you tonight?”

“Tonight?” McCoy repeated blankly, completely at a loss.

“Yeah, the lecture on all that genetic experimentation in the Kasawa sector. You said you were gonna go, I looked for you there.”

“Oh. That.” McCoy rubbed the back of his neck, looking up at Jim. “We have a lot of stuff going on in here,” he said. _Aren’t you angry with me?_ He thought.

“That’s too bad, it was really good. The Commodore is going to be here for another week, though. A few of us got him to agree to meet us for drinks Saturday night. You should come.”

McCoy gaped at him. Wanted to ask how the hell he managed that. Specifically wanted to ask whose dick he sucked to arrange it. Also would like to ask what the hell he was doing there, acting all Jim-dandy as if he hadn’t made it perfectly clear, three nights ago, that Bones—McCoy—was no longer welcome in his presence.

Yes—McCoy had been lying to himself. The whole thing had really bothered him. It had been hard to concentrate the day after, hearing again Jim’s impassioned speech ringing in his ears, playing out all the things he Should Have Said in response. Not to mention the way the memory of the damn kid’s swollen lips, of the heat and weight of his head pressed against McCoy’s thigh, clung like a thin film to his skin, pulling at him when he moved, as he breathed.

****

“But,” Kirk was still talking, oblivious, fiddling with the corner of a paper printout. McCoy fought the urge to bat his hand away. “Before that, tomorrow night. Football game. I have an extra ticket and you’re coming with me.”

“What?” McCoy asked, indignation and something like panic rising in his throat.

“Yeah. You have to be there. It’s Ole Miss.”

McCoy felt his mouth fall open. Pushed off from the desk and stood, too-close to Kirk since the kid didn’t back off when he rose. Crossed his arms over his chest. “Are you _stalking_ me, Kirk?”

“What? Me? No, I told you, I looked you up. Leonard McCoy, University of Mississippi class of 2249. Said so right above the Ode to your Brain-Grafting-Magic-Thing. By the way I think the test went well, thanks again.”

“ _Telling_ me you looked me up doesn’t mean you’re not a stalker,” McCoy protested feebly.

Kirk only rolled his eyes. “I’m not stalking you, McCoy. Can’t a guy take his friend out to a game on a Friday night? What else were you gonna do anyway?”

McCoy opened his mouth to reply, eyes darting around the lab, looking for inspiration, resting for a beat on the back of Novak's sun-starved neck.

_Friend?_

“Exactly.” Jim nodded sagely, bristling the hair on the back of McCoy’s neck. “So, the game’s at six, then drinks and debauchery afterwards. I’ve got the ticket here,” he added, digging in his jacket pocket. “Would you be more likely to actually show up if I gave it to you now, so you know I can’t just scalp it if you blow me off?”

McCoy’s mouth was open again. The _balls_ on this kid. He simply couldn’t wrap his mind around it. Mutely he pressed his thumb to the PADD Jim was holding out, a moment later heard his own beep softly from inside his satchel. No doubt notifying him that one ticket to the ‘Fleet Acad/Ole Miss game had been transferred to his account.

Jim smiled at him. “You’ll have fun. Promise. I’ll see you tomorrow night.” And with a hearty clap to the shoulder, he waltzed back out the door.

McCoy’s eyebrows drew together in a magnificent scowl as he looked after him. His face must have looked like a thundercloud in August; when Novak turned to ask him something a minute later the tech’s face went, if possible, a little paler and his eyes widened.

“What?” McCoy snapped.

“Uh. I just…was wondering if you cross-checked the Vulcan and Tellarite samples yet?”

McCoy ran a hand over his face, attempted to compose his features as he re-settled himself at his station. “Give me two minutes, I’ll have the data for you.”

He felt Novak’s eyes on the back of his head and sighed.

***

McCoy dropped into bed at eight in the morning and slept until the sun went down. He woke to the beep of his comm. It was Kirk, of course, telling him where to meet, warning him not to flake out. McCoy groaned as he cut the connection, threw an arm over his eyes and tried to recapture his dream. Joanna had been smiling at him.

He rose and showered, then dug through his suitcase in search of civilian clothes that didn’t make him look like an old man who liked to be in bed by nine. He paused as he unearthed his old school sweatshirt. _Ole Miss Athletic Department_ it declared, and brought a painful smile to his lips. He pressed the fabric to his nose and inhaled. It smelled like Jocelyn’s laundry detergent. There was a powerful twisting in his gut and the room seemed to shiver around him. Six years since he graduated. That meant seven years since Jocelyn had lied her _I-do_. Seven years since Joanna had made her first single-celled appearance in their lives. Seven years since he’d done something normal like go to a game with a friend.

Novak had laughed, a little manically, McCoy thought, when he’d suggested the kid ought to try and find a ticket and come along. “Socialize? With people who want to watch guys chase a ball across a field? Me? Are you feeling okay, doc?”

“Not really,” McCoy muttered to the empty room, and pulled the sweatshirt over his head.

***

He spied Kirk’s shaggy head in the beer line outside the stadium. He was talking animatedly to a drop-dead gorgeous girl with deep brown hair and a laughing face. Hanging on her arm was a short blond girl with a round face and curves that _did things_ to McCoy’s insides if let himself think about them when he was alone. Which he did, sometimes, always feeling sick about it when he saw her in their Med-track Command Procedurals lecture the next morning. He stopped dead. Too late.

“Hey, Bones!” Jim called, waving him over. He went.

“Nice shirt!” the dark-haired girl grinned at him. “Jim said you went to Ole Miss. I’m from Tupelo. When did you graduate?”

“2249,” Jim answered for him. “Bones this is Haven. And you know Meg.”

The blond girl shot a _shut-up-you-ass_ look at Jim that mystified McCoy before extending her hand with something like a coy smile. “Doctor McCoy.”

Her handshake was cool and firm and her fingers lingered in his for just a moment too long for McCoy’s peace of mind. He dug his hands into his pockets. Music started up from inside the stadium and the girls turned at the noise. McCoy took the opportunity to glare venomously at Kirk, who raised his eyebrows and shot back a grin.

They made it to their seats with two pitchers of beer and a tray of nachos without McCoy having to say anything. The two girls wanted to sit next to each other so McCoy found himself sitting next to Meg and someone he neither knew nor wanted to know. He checked his watch and sent a silent prayer heavenward, begging for the next seven minutes to pass quickly.

Meg turned to him after two minutes. “Jim says you have a daughter?” she asked.

He stiffened. Glanced over her head. Thought he saw Jim’s head turn at the sound of his name, his jaw tightening a little as he listened in.

“Yeah,” McCoy said, looking back towards the field.

“How old is she?”

“Six.”

“Aw,” Meg sighed. “That’s such a good age. My sister has a seven year old. That’s when they really start to become _people_ , you know? They can tell you about themselves, what they want and what they like. It’s pretty magical.”

McCoy turned a little on the bench, made eye contact. Smiled.

“Of course,” Meg continued, smiling, “then they can also start telling you what they _don’t_ like and what they _don’t_ want. That can be a little less magical.”

“Not to mention the first time they cuss at school. ‘But daddy said it’ doesn’t seem to impress kindergarten teachers much,” he said.

Meg laughed. “My sister never forgave me when Jordan came home from visiting me and called his sister a bitch straight off the plane.”

McCoy grinned. Was he really sitting through the pre-show, talking kids with this woman? Because it seemed kind of like a dream. He was in the middle of his favorite Jo-story (The one about how Jocelyn finally got fed up with their four year old swearing like a sailor and he’d meticulously replaced the profanity in his speech with medical terminology; “And then Mary Goddamn Cosgrove called our house after school one day to ask what _pruritic suppurative urticaria_ was, and if she should be concerned that Jo had yelled that after Luanne Campbell pulled Jo’s hair,”) when the teams poured out on to the field to thunderous applause and the game began.

McCoy was shocked, at half time, to realize both how quickly the time had flown but also how much he’d been enjoying himself. Cheering on his team, although he and Haven were nearly the only ones rooting for Mississippi, had transported him years back in time; the players were different but the colors were the same and had him jumping out of his seat and holding his breath and calling unheard profanities down into the field like a teenager. Haven leaned around Meg to grin at him, offering her gloved palm for a high-five.

“They’ve still got it,” she crowed. “These coasties don’t have a chance.”

He laughed. “Not a snowball’s chance in Georgia.”

“I’m getting cold,” Meg said, looking at McCoy. “Want to go get a coffee with me?”

“Nah, I’m all right,” he said, feeling warm from the rush of the game as much as the pitcher of beer he’d consumed by himself.

“I’ll go with you,” Haven said quickly, taking Meg’s arm and standing with her. “We’ll be back. Jim? Anything?”

Jim rolled his eyes and shook his head and as soon as Meg and Haven were out of earshot he slid over next to McCoy. “Way to fail Obvious 101, man.”

“What?” Jim had this way of off-balancing him, making statements so out-of-nowhere that McCoy was left with little more than surprised monosyllables.

“She didn’t care about the coffee,” Jim said patiently, as though McCoy had lost twenty years in the past two minutes, “she wanted to get you alone.”

McCoy blinked and looked away, frustrated irritation making a two-pronged attack on his gut; he couldn’t tell if he were more aggravated with Jim for setting him up on a date without permission or warning or with himself for being so slow on the uptake about it. _Easy, doctor,_ he told himself. _You were eighteen the last time you had to deal with any of this crap._

“Come on, Bones,” Jim was wheedling, pushing his fist into McCoy’s knee. “She’s really into you. Says she thought you’d hit it off in class. _And_ she likes kids.”

“Would you cut it out?” McCoy hissed suddenly, sharper than he’d intended. Kirk looked taken aback and fell silent. “God, you’re like a twelve-year-old.” He looked away, surprised at the vehemence of his reaction.

“Go on,” Kirk said after a moment. McCoy didn’t respond. “In what way am I like a twelve-year-old?”

McCoy turned on the bench to look at him. He had this wide-eyed look going on, almost distressed, completely at a loss. McCoy sighed. “You can’t,” he began, turning the kid’s patient, talking-to-infants voice back on him, “just put two people in a box together and expect sparks to fly. This isn’t a god damn chemical equation.”

Kirk opened and closed his mouth a few times, his eyebrows working. “I didn’t mean…” he shook his head. “I wasn’t expecting you to marry her or anything,” he finished lamely, looking abashed.

“Good. ‘Cuz I’m done with that bullshit for awhile.” Irritation suddenly flared brighter in his chest, remembering how Kirk had gone off on _him_ a few days ago. “Do you not remember all that shit I told you in the bar a month back? Did I say _any_ thing that sounded like I was ready to go back out on the prowl? Jesus, Kirk, I’ve barely been divorced six months.” He broke off, glaring.

“I’m sorry,” Kirk said. Sounded like he meant it. “I just thought you might have a good time. You know,” he gestured to the field. “The game. And Meg is really nice.”

McCoy sighed and relented. “Yeah. She is.”

“ _Great_ rack.”

“Kirk.”

“Sorry.”

McCoy glanced sideways at him, saw the direct, hopeful gaze the kid was pointing on him. Made a decision. Grinned. “She does have a really great—“

“Oh, I know.” Kirk grinned, cutting him off with a raised hand. A moment later he saw why as the girls returned, empty-handed.

“The lines are really long, and we’re getting cold,” Haven told them. “Since it’s a foregone conclusion our team is going to win,” she looked almost apologetic as she grinned at McCoy, “we think we’re going to take off. Maybe go around Gary’s place for awhile. You guys want to come?”

Jim lifted his eyebrows at McCoy. “I’ll do whatever you want to do, man.”

McCoy looked out over the field. The lights, the crowd; everything seemed suddenly very noisy and irksome. He glanced up at Meg, who caught his eye and smiled at him. He found himself suddenly short of breath as he stood. “Why not.”

***

“Where are you from that you think this is cold?” Jim snorted as Meg shivered again.

“Hawaii, thanks. And this _is_ cold! Leonard knows, don’t you?” she appealed to the doctor, taking his arm and cozying up beside him as they walked. “It doesn’t get this cold in Georgia, does it?”

McCoy thought he heard Haven snort softly from her place on Jim’s arm, but he didn’t look around. “Not usually. This is bitter January weather, if anything.”

“See? You can stuff it, Iowa boy.”

Jim chuckled and shook his head. “Maybe you should have applied to the Vulcan Science Academy.”

Meg sighed in relief as they entered the heated dorm, but didn’t release McCoy’s arm. He looked down at the top of her head, marveling again that he was here, going to a party with this woman on his arm. His heart skipped a few beats as his mind skipped ahead a few hours, imagining possibilities.

“…yeah I’m hoping Gary doesn’t make a scene,” Jim was saying when McCoy tuned back in to the moment. He was speaking quietly with Haven, a few steps ahead.

She shrugged. “If he can’t deal, that’s his issue. I don’t think you owe him anything, least of all _another_ explanation.”

“Have you met Gary Mitchell?” Meg asked when she saw him listening. He shook his head, remembering, _Shit, Gary Mitchell lost both his parents that day_. She pursed her lips. “He’s all right. Throws great parties. Fun to talk to. Kind of a psycho.”

“And this is whose party we’re going to?” he asked, consternation creeping into his voice.

She shrugged again. “He’s providing the liquor. And he has really good taste.”

“Oh, I see.” She looked up at him and he returned her grin without hesitation.

***

It turned out to be a lounge party. Mitchell had reserved the common area on the third floor of Grant hall and roped it off. There was even a guy at the door holding a guest list. McCoy was impressed. Kind of amused.

“Kirk,” the bouncer read off, “Follie, Williams,” nodded at Haven and Meg. Directed a skeptical look at McCoy.

“He’s with me,” Meg and Jim said at the same time, glanced at each other and laughed.

“He’s with us,” Jim amended, peering into the room. “Gary! Hey, Gary!” he called out, waving. A tall, wiry kid about Jim’s age stepped out a moment later, clasped Jim’s hand in greeting. “Gary this is Leonard McCoy, he’s with us. It’s okay if he comes in, right?”

“What? Yeah, yeah, ‘course,” he said, gripping McCoy’s hand and giving him a kind of greasy smile. “Any friend of Jim’s, etc, etc. Come on in, the game just started back up, we’re watching it on the big screen. Booze to your left, game straight ahead. I’ll be right there,” he waved them off as someone else waved to get his attention.

Meg broke away from him to greet a friend across the room and McCoy stepped up to Jim, speaking in his ear, “First you set me up on a date without telling me, then you drag me to a party with a guest list you know I’m not on? You’re unbelievable, Kirk.” He lifted an eyebrow in what he hoped was an accusing stare, felt it fall into a grin as Jim got another one of those looks on his face, his tongue darting out nervously.

“Stop _doing_ that,” Jim whined when he saw McCoy laughing at him. “I never know if you’re just setting me up or gonna bite my head off. And you can call me Jim.”

“I know. But I like how _Kirk_ makes you squirm.” He looked at the kid, a little surprised by his own audacity.

Jim’s lips parted in surprise and he was probably cooking up a really searing reply when McCoy felt a hand on his shoulder and he turned away before Jim could give it voice.

“Julian!” he exclaimed, shaking the offered hand. "What are you doing here?”

McCoy shook his head at his fellow doctor. Julian’s first year at med school had been McCoy’s last but they’d crossed paths a few times there and then the younger man had sought out _the famous Dr. McCoy_ when he came to Starfleet Academy, once word had gone around campus that _the brightest star in neuroscience_ was in residence.

“Back at you,” Julian grinned at him. “I didn’t know you knew Gary.”

“Didn’t, till tonight,” he admitted, “but _this_ clown,” he turned to nod at Jim. Was greeted by empty space. Blinked in surprise. “Anyway, Jim Kirk, who was here a second ago, and who seems to know everyone in the damn ‘fleet, decided it’d be a good idea to bring me to a party I wasn’t invited to in order to set me up with a friend of his without telling me.”

Julian laughed. “Kirk does seem to exist on some kind of alternate plane, doesn’t he. Good kid, though.”

McCoy rolled his eyes. “What are you, Julian, like two years older than him?”

“Something like that. Has Novak left the lab in the past forty-eight hours, as far as you know?”

McCoy shrugged. “Probably not. I tried to get him to come to the game tonight. I think I almost gave him a nervous breakdown at the thought.”

“Poor kid,” Julian shook his head, then wrinkled his eyebrows at McCoy. “And you; the game, this party, hanging out with Kirk? You know I’ve never seen you outside class or the lab. What the hell’s going on?” he laughed.

“As of 8:00 this morning I am done with my labwork for the semester,” McCoy shrugged, a wordless _why-not_. “I’ve got two tests late next week, but I could do them in my sleep.”

“Oh, lord, speaking of tests, did you see the news last night?”

“No, I was in the lab.”

Julian blew out his breath, running a hand through his hair. “Kwenten is going to flip shit,” he said in an awed tone. “You know the Angston theory that he’s been so keen on all semester?”

“Yeah,” he rolled his eyes. “I’ve got his dissertation burned into my corneas for the exam on Wednesday.”

“Oh, McCoy,” Julian was shaking his head, “you have no idea. It’s been the bane of my existence for the past two months. And two surgeons in Madrid just effectively disproved it this week.”

“What.” McCoy’s mouth fell open in horror.

“I know.”

“But that’s…good God. Do you think he’s…”

“I have no idea. I’m just hoping someone broke the news to him first, so he didn’t have to hear it on the feeds. His heart’s not in the best shape, you know? This could end him.”

“Wait, tell me everything. What did they discover, was it the hemocyanin…?”

Julian was still trying to untangle the details for McCoy when they realized that they had an eavesdropper. Julian paused mid-sentence, a _can-I-help-you_ look on his face that McCoy recognized; it was common to doctors everywhere when suddenly expected to transition from med-speak back to plain English.

Jim was running his tongue over his bottom teeth, watching them in amusement, a beer in one hand and the other planted on his hip. “Don’t mind me,” he said after a minute.

Julian glanced between Jim and McCoy, distractedly finishing his train of thought.

“Are you talking about M’Benga and Prothero?” Jim asked suddenly. At their surprised looks, he nodded, unfazed. “Commodore Davenport mentioned it last night. He said it was something to do with the control centers in the mesiofrontal cortex, and the way the brain interacts with the rest of the body when they go into the healing trance.” He shrugged. “I read Kwenten’s dissertation earlier this year. I thought it sounded like bullshit, but I’m not a doctor.” He took a swig of his beer. Licked his lips. McCoy realized with a flash of anger that that little habit of Jim’s was really, _really_ starting to get under his skin.

Before either of them could reply, Haven stalked up to Jim, her eyes narrowed.

“Hey baby,” he said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “What’s wrong?”

“Gary Fucking Mitchell is being a complete ass,” she stated, rising on her toes to press a vindictive little kiss against his jaw.

Jim rolled his eyes. “I’ll talk to him.”

“And end up leaving with him? No thanks. I’m not in the mood to get stood up because arguing with him gets you hot.”

McCoy felt his eyebrows creeping up his forehead, and wondered when the room had gotten so warm.

Jim glanced at McCoy, his jaw tense. He looked almost embarrassed. “Fine. Do you wanna leave?”

“No way. He invited me here, he can deal with me being here. With you. Fuck him.”

“Done that,” Jim laughed softly. He’d turned away, moved the two of them off a few steps. McCoy realized it was now he who was eavesdropping, and that Julian had wandered away without his noticing. “C’mon babe, let’s just go.” Jim’s hands had curled around her narrow hips and he was leaning his forehead against hers.

“I’m not ready to go,” she murmured into his skin between kisses. “I told Meg I’d wait to see how things went with her…I don’t want her to have to walk home alone.”

“Well let’s walk her home,” Jim said patiently, his tone suggesting anything but that he was pulling the most beautiful girl in the room closer to him, “and say goodnight,” nuzzling into her neck, hands slowly migrating south, “and then go to your room, and…”

“And what, Jim Kirk?” she purred against his cheek, eyes slipping shut as he lowered his mouth to her ear, whispering too quietly for McCoy to hear.

When Haven gave a soft little moan and tightened her grip on the back of his neck, McCoy turned and walked stiffly away, hands shoved deep in his pockets. He directed his feet towards the table with the alcohol. _What in hell, McCoy._ He gritted his teeth against whatever strange intoxicant was coursing through his system, turning away from the little tableau that had him half-hard and breathing through his nose in attempt to calm his racing pulse.

He didn’t see Meg until he’d almost walked right past her.

“Leonard?” she said again, amused. “Looking for this?”

He blinked, trying to focus on her. She was holding two drinks, offering one to him. “What is it?”

“Aldebaran whiskey. Jim said you liked it.”

“Aldebaran whiskey,” he repeated, lips twisting in amusement despite himself as he took the plastic cup from her fingers. He sipped it cautiously, swirling it around his mouth appreciatively. He hadn’t tasted it since that shuttle ride, however-long ago. It tasted like Jim.

“I feel bad I took you away from the game,” she said when he took a longer drink without responding. “Want to go watch the end? It’s playing in the other room.”

McCoy shrugged, tossing back the rest of his whiskey. “Why not. There more of this somewhere?” he asked, glancing around.

They settled onto a couch in the game room, fresh drinks in hand. Meg slipped out of her shoes and tucked her feet up under her. McCoy rested one ankle on his knee. Their thighs pressed warmly together.

“Where’s Jim?” he asked after a minute.

“I saw them sneak out the door a few minutes ago. They’re probably going to go fuck in a closet somewhere.” His chin jerked reflexively and he turned startled eyes towards her. “They’ll be back. She never leaves without saying goodbye,” she reassured him. 

“Nice roommate,” he muttered into his drink.

“She is. We got really lucky.”

“Really?” he couldn’t help the skepticism that crept into his voice.

“Really.” Silence fell between them as McCoy tried to concentrate on the game.

“How did that work out, exactly, you two rooming together? I didn’t know they ever put Medical and Command together.”

Meg nodded, as though she were used to explaining their situation. “Haven got here last year with a degree in pre-med, same as me. She was in training to be a CMO, me to be a ship’s counselor. But after two semesters she decided what she really wants to be is a captain. So she switched tracks. That’s how she and Jim met, by the way, they’re in all their first-year command courses together. But anyway we liked living together so much that she made them let us stay together.”

“Made them?”

Meg shrugged one shoulder and quirked a grin. McCoy said nothing. After a moment she added, in a quieter voice, shifting to get closer to him, “She’s really not a slut, you know, despite being here with Jim Kirk.” She laughed softly. “Or vice versa, for that matter.”

“Excuse me?” McCoy stiffened.

“You know what Jim is like; you know what most of the people he goes out with are like. But she’s not.” She paused and McCoy considered telling her that he had no idea what Jim was like; didn’t actually know the kid and didn’t know why everyone seemed to think they were friends. But she kept talking. “And you don’t know Haven, but she doesn’t usually do much better. It’s like they’re the same person.” She shook her head, downing the rest of her drink. McCoy followed suit. “Want another?” she asked, rising before he could answer, returning too quickly with another whiskey for him and a beer for herself.

“So Jim always tells the story of how you met, and why he calls you Bones,” she said, nudging him with her foot. He moved his left arm as she sat, settling herself next to him, much closer now, leaving him with no recourse but to drape his arm over the back of the sofa. His fingers brushed against her hair. “But never says why you joined Starfleet in the first place. What _are_ you doing here, Doctor McCoy?”

“Jim didn’t say?” McCoy repeated, startled. _Goddammit._ Every time he started to get comfortable _that damn kid_ came up again and jolted him back into awkward and unfamiliar territory. _Jim didn’t say?_ _Well then, what_ does _he…_ “Why does he say he calls me ‘Bones’?”

“Oh, something about you being a doctor, and him having the memory of a goldfish and forgetting your name, and ‘Sawbones’ being an old term for a surgeon. But you know Jim, if the story doesn’t revolve around him, he doesn’t tell it.”

 _Or if the story isn’t his to tell,_ McCoy thought, kind of shocked by the kid’s unexpected display of tact. So shocked he opened his mouth and blew tact all to hell.

“I had a private practice back in Georgia. After the divorce the ex-wife got sole custody of our daughter. So I left.”

“Oh,” Meg said, rolling her Heineken bottle between her palms.

McCoy groaned inwardly and took a long drink. No one wanted to hear about their date’s divorce. _I’m definitely too old for this shit,_ he thought wearily, looking into the depths of his cup; it looked like a safe refuge and he wanted to climb inside. Settled for downing the rest in one swallow.

“Jim said—“ Meg started, and he interrupted her.

“Jim’s an idiot.” The words spoke themselves.

“Well. Yeah,” Meg agreed. He didn’t look at her but he heard the _well, duh_ in her voice. “This _is_ Jim Kirk we’re talking about.”

“Everyone’s got something to say about him,” McCoy continued, feeing the alcohol working its way through his veins. “And everyone _knows_ him. How does everyone know him? Campus ain’t that small.”

“No, it’s not, but…it’s _Jim Kirk_ ,” she repeated, and McCoy narrowed his eyes. “Well,” she started, looking sideways at him, “for one thing he’s taking about twice as many classes as everyone else so if you’re command or ops you’re probably in at least one course with him. And he goes out every weekend. And he’s not a doctor or a scientist so he’s not cloistered in a lab with the same five people every day of the week.”

“My _lab assistant_ knows him. How does he know my lab assistant?”

“Who, Novak?”

“ _You_ know him?”

“No, not personally, Jim just—“

McCoy spread his hands, feeling defeated. Ran tired fingers through his hair.

“That was fast,” Meg murmured a moment later, sounding amused.

He looked up, followed her gaze. Jim and Haven had reappeared, looking…almost the same, actually. Her hair was down, now, instead of up, but other than that…

“Sometimes I think they’re soulmates.” Meg continued, watching them. “Although trying to suggest to either of them that they could be more than good friends who sleep together once a week would be like trying to tell a Vulcan it’s okay to cry.” The game had just ended (33-10), and Gary was over in the corner of the room, arguing loudly with the punk kid wearing oversized headphones that McCoy assumed was the DJ. After a moment Gary seemed to make his point and a pulsing, throbbing beat began to flow from all corners of the room, inspiring shouts of general approval and a flurry of activity. 

The lights dimmed and the room seemed suddenly surreal. People writhing and shuddering in time to the rhythm. A thrill started in the base of McCoy’s spine, chasing the alcohol out to the tips of his fingers. It was warm, surrounded by people, so close to Meg. “I like Jim best when he’s with Haven.” She was still talking. Breathing into his ear to be heard. He tried to recapture the thread of what she’d been saying. “Because then I’m not spending all my energy feeling bad for the girl.”

McCoy’s eyes found Jim and Haven in the shadowy crowd. Wondered why they’d felt the need to hide away in some closet if they saw no problem with how they were moving together now. “Or the guy. Not that I feel bad for Gary Mitchell. I mean, I come to his parties and drink his booze, but he’s a real asshole.” She was nodding significantly towards another of the silhouettes before them. He wasn’t moving like the rest of them; he was standing tall and stiff as a mast in the flowing sea of bodies. Watching. “He and Jim seem to have some kind of history, probably with their parents being all…ya know…the _Kelvin_ thing. And Gary has this ridiculous _thing_ about Jim. Seems to think _they’re_ soulmates, or something.”

Meg was leaning her head on McCoy’s shoulder, voice blurred and sleepy and amused. “Told me _all_ about it one night when we were all stoned, down by the bridge. Says he just _knows_ some things, sometimes. Like. Has these intuitions. And he knows he and Jim are supposed to be together, or some shit.” She laughed softly, her breath ghosting across his cheek. “And these are the people I hang out with,” she added, pulling back to look him in the eyes. “So you can imagine how thrilled I was when Jim said you were coming to the game with us.”

McCoy looked away, down into his empty cup. Focused on uncurling his cramped fingers. The ethanol making its way through his system was whispering to him, reminding him that there was an attractive woman pressed against him. The doctor in his head couldn’t get past the fact that they’d just spent the last half-hour discussing the sexual habits of a mutual friend. After watching said mutual friend making out with a girl had given him a hard-on. And no, he hadn’t been looking at Haven.

Something in his posture or expression, or maybe the bone-weary sigh he let slip past his lips, must have signaled to Meg that the night was over. Guilt coated the back of his tongue as she dropped her feet to the floor, tucked them back into her boots. Looked at him with a soft smile.

“I’m getting sleepy,” she said, “and I can tell they’re going to be here all night,” she added with a glance at Jim and Haven still on the dance floor. “Walk me home?”

There was a warmth in the way she asked it, _walk me home,_ that didn’t mean _walk me to my bed,_ and also didn’t mean _walk me home then leave so I can call someone who won’t leave me hanging._ It meant _walk me home so we don’t have to say goodnight yet; I enjoy your company._ Maybe. Maybe it meant _don’t make me walk across campus alone; I don’t want to get raped._

McCoy stood, offered her a hand up. She took it with a charmed lift of her eyebrows, biting back a grin as she met his eyes. He bowed a little, abbreviated gallantry, over her fingers and tucked her hand into the crook of his arm, wove them through the dancers and towards the door. He was just breathing a sigh of relief as they stepped out into the fully-lit and mercifully quiet hallway when a heavy hand fell on his shoulder.

“Hey, asshole,” Jim Kirk said, glaring at him. “Not even gonna say good night? Real cool.”

“Good night, Jim,” Meg said, rolling her eyes at him.

“Night, baby,” Jim grinned at her, bending his head to kiss her cheek.

McCoy wondered for a wild moment if he would be next in line for a _baby_ and a kiss, but when Jim turned to him it was with a different expression, one McCoy wasn’t quite sure how to read. Maybe it was something like _you break her heart and I’ll break your nose._ McCoy had never really understood the social code around these kinds of things. He accepted Jim’s offered hand, shook it firmly, then stumbled a half-step off balance when Jim pulled him in for a one-armed hug.

“Thanks for coming out tonight, Bones. Next time I’ll let you drag me somewhere, okay?” Jim released him, stepped back. “See you both tomorrow?”

“Probably whenever you stumble out of bed in the afternoon,” Meg laughed at him. He smirked, looking more like himself, nodded and ducked back into the lounge.

Meg shook her head. “He’s ridiculous. But I love him.”

Bones nodded.


	6. Chapter 6

Jim stretched and rolled over, smiled as he came slowly awake and realized he had a light sheet draped carefully over him. Haven always did that when she got up before him. He folded his hands behind his head and looked sleepily up at the ceiling, rotating his ankles and stretching the kinks out of his legs.

_What a great night._

He glanced at the clock, evaluating the likelihood of falling back asleep; it was getting on towards noon. He sighed and slid out of bed, hunted around for the pair of sweat pants he kept in Haven’s room.

Bare-chested and yawning, he wandered out into the small living room that connected Meg and Haven’s bedrooms, blinking in the light from the window.

“Morning, sunshine,” Meg said, looking up from where she lay on the couch.

“Is it, still?” he mumbled.

He tapped her knee and she moved her feet so he could sit down, replacing them in his lap when he did. She was flipping through channels on the screen, past news reports and games. At last, with an _ooh_ , she settled on a movie staring someone Jim knew he should recognize.

“Where’s Haven?” he asked during a pause in the dialogue.

“Lunch date with someone,” Meg shrugged.

“Oh, yeah, Greg Philips. They hooked up last week, I think she’s giving him the it’s-not-you-it’s-me talk today.”

Meg chuckled. “Right on schedule.”

“It baffles me that people still think they can tie her down. No one—okay, no one _sane,_ Gary doesn’t count—has honestly tried that with me since my second week.”

Meg shrugged. “I think it’s different because she’s a girl. There are still a lot of latent stigmas attached to being a female who goes in for sex without commitment. I think men, even if they’re not aware of it, think they can change her.”

“Like, ‘She just hasn’t met the right man yet? My dick will change her forever?’” Jim rolled his eyes. “That’s pathetic. Men are idiots.”

“Yes. They are.”

The man onscreen was staring down an Andorian in the midst of a crowded spaceport, intense music playing in the background. There may have been sexual tension, Jim wasn’t really sure.

“Bones here?” he asked.

“No.”

“Oh. Is that a disappointed ‘no’ or a ‘he already left’ no?”

“You’re an ass,” she replied automatically. “It’s just a no.”

“How am I am ass?” he protested.

She didn’t look at him. “Did you honestly think he was the kind of guy to sleep with a girl on the first date, even if he wasn’t a complete wreck?”

“Wait—“ Jim’s eyebrows wrinkled as he honestly wondered for a moment if there were two people on campus called _Bones._ “What?”

She rolled her eyes at the screen. “Leonard walked me home, gave me a very polite kiss on the cheek, and apologized for you.”

“Apologized for _me?_ ” Jim was starting to feel irritated on top of disoriented. “What the hell did I _do_?”

“Leonard McCoy is a very broken man.”

“Bullshit. And that’s not an answer.”

“To ‘What did you do?’ What you _didn’t_ do is tell me he had _issues_.” She leaned half-off the couch to snag a bag of grapes off the end table, opened it and offered him first grab.

“I told you he has a kid,” he took a handful.

“A kid is not an issue.”

“I assume all people with kids have kid-related issues.”

“Lots of people have kids without having kid-issues. Leonard has…ex-wife issues. In that he’s still in love with this woman that he loathes to the core of his being.” Meg was gazing out the window now, peeling a large grape with her teeth. The people on screen continuing to act out their overdramatic lives. “I don’t think he’s seen his daughter since the divorce. His wife somehow got sole custody of her, so seeing Joanna would mean seeing her, too. So he therefore also loathes _himself_ to the core of his being, because he can’t bring himself to interact with _her_ , even for the sake of his daughter.”

Jim gaped at her around a mouthful of grapes. “He _told_ you all that?”

“No.” She smiled.

He shut his mouth. “ _What_ field are you going into? Mind-reading?”

“I’m in training to be a Betazoid.”

Jim chuckled, because he knew she expected it, and retreated into his thoughts as she returned her attention to her movie. Bones? Broken? Pun aside…that was weird. He had issues, sure. Everyone had issues. He had issues. Haven had issues. Meg had issues, though she pretended not to, or at least that they didn’t matter. Jim was starting to realize—actually realize, not just say he realized—that his issues involved an inability to relate to people except through the medium of sex. He’d just started congratulating himself on keeping Meg and Bones out of that category when he remembered what Bones had said last night; _You can’t just put two people in a box together and expect sparks to fly._ Great. So he took two of the only friends he _hadn’t_ slept with and tried to hook them up? He didn’t even want to ponder what that said about him.

“Do you think he had a good time last night?” he asked, reaching across her for the grapes, trying to pull himself out of the downward spiral of his thoughts.

“Definitely,” she said warmly, “I think you’re his fucking hero.”

“What? Why?”

She cocked her head, considering. Jim recognized her therapist-face and settled back in his seat, watching her, ready to be told exactly _why._ “He’s not an introvert by nature, you can see it in how he interacts with people, how he enjoyed the game. He’s a natural conversationalist. People like him.” She looked at him. “But he’s a doctor, and a genius, and now divorced. I think you’re the first person here to look past those things since his wife left him. I _know_ you’re the first person he’s let get to him since then.”

_Get to him?_ “Well, you—“

“Yeah,” she interrupted, “I talked to him in class. Once. I totally bought the don’t-fuck-with-me act. I would never have pushed him like you did.”

“So why’d you let me set you up with him?”

“Is that a serious question?” she laughed. “You, Jim Kirk? Have you _looked_ at him? Honestly, with you taste for dark hair and dark secrets, I couldn’t believe you were being so generous with him, I’d’ve thought you’d be all over him.” Her tone was light, but she wasn’t joking. She was looking back at the screen but her eyes weren’t following the characters (The Andorian was sprawled across a hotel mattress, naked, watching the human dress hurriedly and all-but-sprint from the room). Her head was tilted towards him, waiting for his response.

Jim opened his mouth without anything to say. “I—what, no. I mean, yes, he’s…we’re…”

“Friends? Jim, do you _have_ friends you don’t sleep with?” Again; light, but still not a joke.

“Yes!” Jim realized he was gaping, but it was really fucking disconcerting to hear her voicing his thoughts of a few minutes ago. He loved Meg, adored her, but she could be really fucking irritating sometimes.

“ _I_ don’t count.”

“Why not?”

“Because you tried,” she reminded him with an arched brow.

“Oh. Yeah.” His irritation dissipated as he looked at her, that sweet smile playing on her lips. He grinned and lobbed a grape at her. She caught it one-handed and popped it into her mouth. Whatever ship ended up with her on board was going to be the most self-fucking-aware ship in the fleet.

She laughed, watching his face. “Well, it’s for the best. Someone, his ex, I’m sure, fucked him bad. I think it’s either going to take a really, _really_ long time or else someone really…specific…to bring him back. If he ever does come back. I’ve known people like him who just shut down. I wouldn’t be surprised if he never let anyone get that close to him again.”

They fell silent, watching the two men on the screen failing valiantly to pretend that last night was just about the sex. Finally one of them broke, took the other’s face in his hands and kissed him. At Meg’s quiet sigh Jim shook himself and looked over at her. She was watching the screen with one hand pressed to her heart.

“I love this movie,” she said, kicking him when she noticed his judgemental stare. “That guy—Roupel—reminds me of Leonard.”

“What?” he barked a laugh. “The strawberry blonde or the blue?”

“I don’t mean physically, jackass. And the blonde. Have you seen this? Roupel is this complete genius, all his life he’s felt he was destined to do great things, change the world, but he’s haunted by these memories of his childhood, doesn’t even know if they’re real, about his mother beating him, abusing him and leaving him and his father. The point is he grows up and has all this potential but he doesn’t trust anyone, completely isolates himself and becomes more and more paranoid. He met the Andorian, Shrel, while working on some top-secret project for the government and they were the only two with full security clearance so they basically spent an entire year in a lab, just the two of them. Roupel falls for Shrel over the course of the year without realizing it, and runs away, bails on the project, when he does realize it. Shrel chases him halfway around the galaxy, not giving up on him, trying to prove something to him, prove that love doesn’t have to hurt or end in flames, all that sappy, romantic stuff I can’t get enough of.”

“Hmm.” Jim looked around, feeling suddenly restless. He drummed his fingers against her shin and she sighed, sliding her feet to the floor, sitting up and looking at him.

“It’s okay. I’m surprised I got you to sit still for half an hour.”

He grinned apologetically. “I’m hungry,” he lied.

“I got Chinese for lunch, the leftovers are in the fridge.”

He leaned across the couch, kissed her cheek. “You’re a doll.”

He went back into Haven’s room, changed back into his clothes from last night.

“Are you coming out for drinks with Davenport tonight?” he asked as he emerged.

“Is that a real question?” She grinned at him. “I already planned my outfit.”

He laughed, squeezed her shoulder, and left.

***

He walked slowly back across campus towards his own dorm. It was warm in the sun and he stopped on the corner of Archer and Grant, leaned against the street sign and considered the sky.

_I hate to break it to you but Starfleet_ operates _in space._

They’d parted ways after that brief exchange with nothing but a nod and a thanks for the whiskey. Bones had forgotten about it. Jim had forgotten about it. Almost. What were the odds, right? The only two people in civvies on the whole damn shuttle and they end up, hung over and grouchy, sitting next to each other. He’d figured the doctor was running from something, but hadn’t stopped to wonder what.

_Ex-wife. And yeah. My whole damn world._

Marriage meant a lot to some people. Probably most people. But needing someone only gets you hurt. That was a lesson Winona had taught George Kirk’s only son; taught him early and well. But maybe not well enough, he considered, as he relived that moment in the bar, when Bones had asked him, _Your mom doin’ okay these days?_ And Jim’s first, irrational, impulse had been to take the man’s face between his hands and attack his lips like the blonde and the blue in the movie Meg liked so much. So he hadn’t comprehended then how much Bones was hurting, as they sat there in the bar together. Just as, as a child, he hadn’t comprehended how much his mother hurt. Just as he hadn’t ever _let_ himself comprehend how much he, himself, was always hurting.

He laughed aloud as he realized he was seriously considering turning around, going back to Meg’s room and asking her to psychoanalyze him. Because what the _fuck_ was he doing, thinking that now he probably needed to sleep with Bones to keep himself from getting attached to the man?


	7. Chapter 7

The bar was dim and edging towards empty. It was somewhere close to three, maybe past; the fact that it was now Sunday morning before the start of finals meant that the cadets who usually turned this bar into a screaming madhouse every Saturday night were either in bed or the library. Or collapsing in heaps of nerves and feverous exhaustion, like McCoy’s roommate.

The doctor had almost called Jim to say he couldn’t make it tonight, he had to make sure his idiot roommate stayed in bed. But then said idiot roommate had fallen asleep—passed the fuck out, more like—which meant McCoy could get close enough to dose him with a nice cocktail of sedatives and elephant tranquilizers and he arrived at the bar only a few minutes after the Commodore and Jim and his crew.

Jim’s face had lit up when Bones walked through the door. He’d waved him over to where ten or twelve cadets were clustered around a large table, and introduced him enthusiastically to Commodore Davenport.

“Dr. Leonard McCoy?” Davenport had asked, his brows lifting. “It’s an honor to meet you, sir.” A man twice his age with a commodore’s braid on his sleeve calling him _sir_ had made his stomach flop disconcertingly as he returned the man’s firm handshake. And _then_ Davenport had launched into what amounted to a love song, regaling them all with the story of how his ship’s surgeon had been able to save the life of his first officer, a few years back, because he’d just happened to be reading up on McCoy’s research. Meg was almost giggling and Jim was beaming at him by the time someone managed to stem the tide of his admiration and engage the Commodore on another topic.

“You don’t do well with praise, do you?” Meg leaned around Jim to murmur to McCoy.

“I’m a doctor,” he muttered. “Not an egomaniac.”

Jim chuckled, put an arm around his shoulder, causing him to stiffen in his seat. “Better get used to it, Bones, cuz I really like showing you off.”

Bones caught Meg’s soft, amused _hah_ as he flushed and elbowed Jim in the ribs, but Jim only grinned at him, dropped his arm and took another long pull off his beer.

And now it was somewhere between three and four in the AM, and the only people left were Jim, Meg, McCoy, some kid named Fennemore, and the Commodore, and they’d relocated to a small, semi-private booth. Meg was yawning in her seat, elbows on the table as she followed the debate, eyes flicking back and forth between Jim and Bones with sleepy interest.

“The point is, Bones,” Jim was reiterating, leaning towards him across the narrow table, “ _yes_ the natural progression of the Kasawa sector has been disrupted, _but_ now that it has, it doesn’t mean Starfleet has the right to move in and keep on disrupting. It’s not our _fault_ that the Orions don’t abide by our Prime Directive, but ‘they did it first’ isn’t a legitimate reason for us to break it too.”

“No Jim, that’s not the point at all,” Bones pointed with the hand holding his drink. He’d switched to beer around midnight, knowing that if he kept with the Jameson he’d be falling asleep on the table like an old man before two. “ _My_ point is that the damage the Orion traders wrought isn’t something that can be shrugged off. The chemicals they introduced to the Kasawans, specifically on Kasawa V, are really not compatible with Kasawa V’s organic matter. And they’re using them for everything—construction, fertilization, fuel…they’re making these enormous technological leaps but it’s all on borrowed time. If you read the latest agricultural reports, you can see that the nutrient value of their produce has dropped exponentially, just in the last generation. Isn’t your mom a farmer? You ought to understand what happens when you try to speed up the growth process using chemical shortcuts. They’re growing empty calories on empty soils and it’s leading to all manner of health problems.”

“But at least they’re _eating,_ ” Jim emphasized again, spreading his hands. “Isn’t that the important point? Before the Orions came, there was widespread famine, plague, riots…all that fun stuff. If they’re ‘borrowing time’ then at least they’re borrowing against the chance to straighten themselves out.”

Bones shook his head, beating his knuckles against the grain of the table. “The children between the ages of seven and fourteen are almost 100% more likely to develop a condition similar to human diabetes. They’re overweight and undernourished. The pictures of fat, happy children are all hype; they’re just walking skeletons underneath. The whole situation is a ticking time-bomb. Nothing you can say, Jim, is going to convince me that the Federation doesn’t have the _responsibility_ to step in and take the matter in hand. This is the life of an entire _planet_ , maybe an entire _system_ , that’s in the balance. The Prime Directive only works when everyone’s playing by the same rules. Which we’re not.”

Jim opened his mouth, cocked his head, closed it again. Gave a soft _hmm_ as he ran his tongue along those damned bite marks that still stood out on his chapped lips and drummed his fingers on the table. “Overweight and undernourished?” he asked after a moment. Bones nodded. Jim let out a breath. “That’s weird.”

“Yeah.”

Jim hesitated, glanced away and then back. “I got a little caught up in the hype, I guess. Kept thinking about Tarsus IV. And how, if there had been anything like that there, any way to just keep people fed, Kodos wouldn’t have…four thousand people wouldn’t have died.”

“Ah,” came a soft breath of understanding from the Commodore. He was watching them; hadn’t said anything for almost a half hour, seeming fascinated by their back-and-forth exchange. Now he leaned forward. “And this is why every captain, every leader, needs a crew who _knows_ him.” He looked at Jim. “I’ve been sitting here, hearing my arguments to the Council, almost word for word, coming out of your mouth. But now,” he turned to Bones, “you’ve really turned me around. You are a skilled speaker, McCoy, to argue the case in a manner that would open Kirk’s eyes to the other side of the issue without directly calling him out on his personal hang-ups.”

Meg and Fennemore both looked as puzzled as McCoy felt, and Jim was looking away, towards the bartender who was wiping down tables on the other side of the room. The Commodore followed his gaze.

“I’ll bet the poor guy’s ready for us to be on our way,” he said, getting to his feet. “And I have a council meeting in too-few hours for me to be up drinking all night like a cadet,” he added with a wink.

Everyone stood, and he shook hands one by one with nods and comments for all. When he got to Kirk he clapped him on the shoulder, telling him it’d been an honor and a pleasure to meet the son of George and Winona Kirk, the more so because it was clear he was going to be a great man and a great captain, do Starfleet proud, etc, etc. Then with his left hand still braced on Kirk’s shoulder he turned and shook McCoy’s hand. “It’s not often I meet two men more uniquely suited to each other. I anticipate following your careers with great interest.”

And then they all spilled out into the night. The Commodore strode off with a wave. Fennemore shook Jim’s hand, said he’d see him in the library tomorrow, and nodded a nice-to-meet-you at Bones. Meg said sleepily that she’d walk with him, his dorm was on her way, and with a kiss on the cheek for both of them, she and Fenney walked away and Jim and Bones were left standing alone on the dark corner of Grant Avenue and Center Street.

Bones looked at Jim, who was standing, hunched against the cold wind blowing off the bay, hands in his pockets.

“Well, good night,” Bones said, the words feeling awkward on his tongue.

“Was it just me or did it sound like Davenport was playing matchmaker with us?” Jim asked, looking off into the distance.

Bones frowned. “It was just you,” he said gruffly. “That’s what happens when you try to debate while drunk.”

“I’m not drunk,” Jim said, shifting his gaze to Bones’s face. “I only had water after that first beer. Davenport was a friend of my mom’s,” he added, as though it explained everything.

Which maybe it did.

The image came, unbidden as always. Jim, sprawled against the arm of the couch, face closed, shoulders tight. _That’s the way it is._

Everyone expected him to have a hang-up about his dad; the Heroic Starfleet Martyr, the Famous George Kirk. Which he probably did. But. As he’d said, lots of kids grow up without a dad. But watching Jim’s face now, Bones saw a shine to his eyes that he thought he recognized. Maybe he didn’t talk about his daddy-issues because it was his mommy-issues that really had a hold on him. The less-famous, the pitied, the whispered-about Winona Kirk.

And speaking of hang-ups. “What was that about Tarsus?”

Jim snorted, looked at his shoes. “Shouldn’t have said that,” he muttered under his breath. Shook his head.

Bones looked at him. Considered letting it drop. “You weren’t there, were you?”

Jim’s mouth twitched. He looked up at Bones with something like defiance. “And if I was?”

“Then I’d understand completely your argument back there,” he tipped his head towards the bar. “Though I still think you’re wrong.”

Jim nodded, smiling slightly. “I think I’m wrong too, now. Thanks to you. Thank god we’re so ‘uniquely suited to each other.’”

It was Bones’s turn to snort, shake his head. “It only sounds suggestive when you say it.”

“Probably because I mean it that way.”

Bones blinked at him. Jim licked his lips, and Bones found himself mirroring the action. “Well,” the doctor said, shoving his hands deep in his pockets, feeling warm despite the wind. There was something in Jim right then. His face, voice, posture; it felt like a challenge. Bones licked his lips again, considered trying to meet him head-on. But another look at Jim’s strangely intense gaze and he shook his head slightly, grasping for something else. “If Command’s ever tom-fool enough to give you a ship, it’d be my honor to serve under you.”

The moment broke as Jim smirked. “Under me? Heh. I _do_ like to be on top.”

Bones rolled his eyes and groaned. “Idiot,” he growled, cuffing the kid on the side of his head. Jim’s face broke into a genuine grin, and he slung an arm around Bones’s shoulders.

“Come on,” he said, turning their feet down Grant. “My dorm’s on the way back to yours. Time for a nightcap. One last hurrah before finals devour our brains.”

***

“I should get going,” Bones said, sounding unconvinced.

“ _Or_ you should stay and have another drink,” Jim said, refilling his glass without waiting for a response.

Bones gave him a look that was trying to be exasperated but turned into a smile and a shake of his head. “Or I should have another drink,” he conceded, lifting his glass to Jim’s. They toasted and drank in silence. “What’s your first exam?” Bones asked after a moment. Jim looked up at him, brow furrowed. He kept doing this—they’d be relaxed and comfortable one minute and then the next Bones would be doing or saying something inane in this strange flat tone, as though needing to hear himself talk to keep his mind off something else.

“Meg says you’re broken,” Jim said suddenly, not giving himself time to think about the words before they were off his tongue.

“Oh?” Bones replied, not missing a beat. “She says you’re a slut.”

That startled Jim into a laugh. He grinned. “She’s an insightful woman.”

“Is she?”

Jim shrugged. “It’s not much of a secret what I am.” He licked his lips and looked at Bones, watched him as he narrowed his eyes, sitting very still on the other end of the couch.

“What else does she say?” the doctor’s voice was gruff.

“Oh, something about how you’re unbearably handsome,” he said, smirking as Bones scowled, “and something about loathing your ex-wife to the core of your being.”

Bones snorted. “Not to put too fine a point on it,” he muttered into his drink.

“What happened?” Jim knew he was pushing it, but couldn’t help himself.

He’d realized—admitted, really—during the afternoon, pacing in his room and going over and over his conversation with Meg, that he was absolutely fascinated by Bones. Had been, ever since sitting next to the aviophobic doctor on the shuttle from Iowa. The encounter in the bar, _Your mom doin’ all right these days?_ had only sharpened his interest, given him a focal point for it. _He’s a very decent human being,_ he could almost hear his grandmother’s voice in his head. She had a thing for _decent human beings._

And then that night in his room, studying over a handle of Romulan Ale, when Bones hadn’t argued with him, had listened to his angry accusations and then just…apologized. Silently, yes, but it had been there. Not defensive, just accepting. _It’s not me you’re mad at but you musta needed to say it._ As if he’d known exactly what Jim needed; to rant, glare and let the words that were tightening his chest spill out, given voice for the first time ever, to be examined and dissected and seen for what they really were. Hurt. Anger. And fear.

Fear that he’d never be more than the sum of his parts; the angry son of a dead father and broken mother. Famous from the day of his birth for something he couldn’t remember. About five minutes after Bones had walked out of his room that night he’d decided, drunkenly yes but with a stone-cold sober conviction, that he was going to make Bones his best friend.

“What happened?” Bones repeated, softly. “Good question.” Jim passed him the bottle. He took it and set it carefully on the floor without refilling his glass. “I fell too hard, we got married too young and I worked too much.” He shrugged, looking up to meet Jim’s gaze. His eyes were tired. “I was never good enough for her. Nothing that hasn’t been happening everywhere since Adam and Eve got kicked outta paradise.”

Jim nodded slowly. “She left you, then?”

Bones laughed, a hard, broken sound between tight lips. “I wish. No. ‘bout four years ago she took up with this fellow she used to be kinda betrothed to,” his voice turned thick with Georgia twang as he withdrew into himself, the words coming deep from within his chest, “Clay Treadway, his name is. He had plenny a’ time for her, when I was bustin’ my ass at the hospital, or off-world. That was when it started. When I was on Dramia II, heading the inoculation program there. A psychologist would prolly tell you that’s the root of my aviophobia.”

“You knew about it for four years?” Jim asked, horrified. Bones didn’t look at him.

“What was I s’posed to do? Joanna was a baby. I coulda done somethin’, sure. Exposed the whole affair, got divorced on my own terms, taken Jo away. But…a girl needs her mama, and I had my work. Leastaways that’s what I kept tellin’ myself. We could pretend to be a family, for her sake.” He shook his head, slowly. “And now here I sit, ready to put whole worlds between me and my baby girl.” He fell silent. Jim watched him, chewing on his lip and lost for words. “Starfleet,” Bones said at last. “What the hell was I thinkin’?”

Jim shrugged. “I dunno,” he said, willing the doctor to look at him, “but I’m glad you’re here. I mean,” he backpedaled quickly as Bones looked up with an incredulous stare, “not glad for what led up to here, to your being here, but, you know. I…” he grasped for words, feeling stupid, “of all the places you could have gone, I’m glad you came here.”

Bones laughed softly. “So am I. Most days.”

“This one of those days?”

Bones shrugged. “Sure.”

“Just, ‘sure’? Not, ‘absolutely, this was the best day ever’?”

“Are you fishing?” Jim gave him a blank look. Bones rolled his eyes. “For compliments, idiot.”

Jim laughed. “Not really.” He liked the way Bones called him _idiot._ “But if you want to give me credit for tonight’s awesomeness, I’m not gonna say no.”

“Then thank you, James T. Kirk, for providing us all with such an unforgettable evening,” Bones said in mock solemnity, raising his glass in salute.

Jim shivered his shoulders in just-as-overplayed ecstasy. “My name sounds so sexy when you say it like that.”

Color crept into Bones’s cheeks but there was no hint of embarrassment in his voice when he said, “Have you ever stopped to wonder _why_ people think you’re a slut?”

Jim wanted to pout and act hurt but that word coming out of Bones’s straight-laced mouth was too funny. He grinned. “Nope.”

Bones’s brows drew together and his face took on a serious caste. Jim felt a muscle jump in his jaw—he recognized that look; it meant someone was getting’ analyzed. He looked away.

“This is the doctor in me, Jim,” he said slowly, “but have you ever considered trying to separate the physical from the sexual?”

Jim looked back at Bones, puzzled but intrigued. “How do you mean?”

Bones sighed, tipping his head back to ponder the ceiling. “In my line of work, it’s generally accepted that bodies are sacred. That what we do as surgeons and physicians is an act of service to the body—to a person’s physical being. There are some go so far as to say that as the embodiment of the soul, the body is a sacred vessel and that serving the body is an act of faith. Now that’s a point I struggle with, faith being something I don’t have in overwhelming supply these days…” he sighed and lowered his gaze, looking away as if the words he sought might be found out Jim’s window.

Jim watched him intently, something expanding in his gut that he would normally be inclined to call _lust_ and dismiss; lust was not what he wished to act upon in this moment. But there was something else, too, something bone-deep that seemed to be moving him; reorienting him as he listened to Bones’s voice.

“But I’ve seen the insides and outsides of more people than I could count,” Bones was looking back at him, and Jim had the disorienting sensation of being very far away from Bones even as he was pulled taut and close by his gaze, “and I can tell you that and I’ve come to see that most people don’t understand themselves from inside their own skin any better than I can understand them from outside of it. Urges and appetites drive us, but we rarely understand what they’re really urging us _toward._ ” He sighed. “What I’m saying, Jim, is that maybe you’re listening to the voice that’s telling you you’re _thirsty_ but you’re hearing it say _hungry_. And so you eat without feeling satisfied. What my metaphor’s trying to say is that bodily cravings aren’t always sexual, and there’s a kind of reverence for life, physical, sexual and spiritual, that comes with a better understanding of those cravings.”

Jim was nodding eagerly, leaning towards Bones. “Yes, Bones, _exactly._ Sex _is_ reverence—no, hear me out,” he interrupted with an entreating hand on Bones’s knee. He settled back against the arm of the couch as Bones pressed his lips together and tilted his head to one side. Jim folded his left knee under himself, right foot tapping the floor as he spoke. 

“You’re a doctor, as you said. You _get_ how hard it is to live just in the body. People _know_ that certain things are bad for them, know they should eat better and exercise more, etcetera, etcetera, but acting on that knowledge is a completely different matter. But when you’re fucking someone—okay,” he amended with a smile at Bones’s look, “when _I’m_ fucking someone—there’s nothing going on besides what’s right there, around you, inside you. It’s no wonder our society frowns on promiscuity, right down to the etymology of the word, when we’re so oriented towards delayed gratification; working hard and denying present pleasure in the promise of something better to come. I think it’s a hold-out from Euro-centric religion and Ameri-centric capitalism. But during sex, there’s nothing but the moment. Not when you’re doing it right. Okay,” he amended once more with a self-conscious shake of his head, looking away; Bones was staring into his glass without expression and it was easier to talk to his fingernails, “I’ve fucked my way out of a few situations and I’ll make no promises as to never doing it again, but it’s not my preferred way of doing things. Sex is about surrendering to compulsions and passions you’ll never be able to fully intellectualize or quantify. I’ve come to just accept that. I used to fight it, used to try to have _rules,_ like the no-kissing thing.” 

Bones looked up at him, questioning, and Jim found himself suddenly struggling for words. “The no-kissing thing…Lots of people have that rule, it seems to be too intimate for people who just want the sex without the culturally-acceptable follow-ups. But I _like_ kissing. So does Haven, who has that rule too, which is why she breaks it for me. Because she knows where we stand.” He shook his head, holding up a hand, palm-out. “But I shouldn’t be sharing other people’s shit. Let’s keep this about me,” he grinned, embarrassed. “Rules. What was I saying. Oh. I guess the only rule I really try to stick to is that I don’t sleep with someone I’m not attracted to. That very neatly keeps the sex just about sex, and not about any outside motivations. But just as important, I’d never _not_ sleep with someone I was attracted to, if the opportunity came up. My body _knows_ what it wants. It’s smarter than my brain, sometimes. And, not just in regards to sex but in everything, I only feel whole when I’m listening to _all_ the voices telling me what to do.” He fell silent and took a long drink. It burned on the way down; his throat was raw. So many unfamiliar words had clawed their way up over the course of the evening, straight from his gut, into his mouth and past his lips, that he wasn’t surprised.

“And how did you come by such a self-actualizing schizophrenia?” Bones asked after several minutes of silence.

Jim swallowed and didn’t look at him, feeling light-headed as he realized what he was about to say. “I almost died on Tarsus, Bones.” He cleared his throat and continued, louder. “I’m sure you’ve had enough experiences with people who’ve almost died to know how deeply that changes a person. With me…the only reason I’m alive is because of the arbitrary whims of a mad dictator. I was among those considered ‘desirable’ enough to live, to continue the gene pool of Tarsus. You can imagine how being told that affected most of the other people I was with. Kodos didn’t need guards around his death camps or soldiers to do his executions. Ordinary citizens were lining up to do his work for him. Makes a lot of history fall into place when you witness that kind of madness firsthand. Makes life and death a lot more real that just growing up with a famous, dead father.”

He shrugged, biting the inside of his cheek, realizing he’d keep talking all night if he let himself. Bones seemed to loose the valve inside him that usually capped out the amount of personal information he revealed to one person. He’d never talked to anyone about Tarsus before. He looked at Bones, a crooked grin tugging at his lips. Bones looked right back, not shying away from what Jim had just given him.

“After that it’s pretty textbook,” Jim shrugged, wanting to get the story over with. “I survived, came home and decided that life was too uncertain to give regret any footing, or to let fear decide my actions. And of course the fact that it worked out for me pretty well at first led to a feeling of entitlement and I started acting as though I could do anything I wanted without thought of consequence. Which led me to that godawful bar in Riverside one miserable night. And that’s what I _don’t_ say to people like Meg,” he concluded with a broad sweep of his arm, “when they scientifically deduce that I’m a slut. Meg is a wonderful person and the brand of counseling she practices works perfectly well on standard humans,” he grinned at Bones, who had twisted his back to lean against the arm of the sofa, mirroring Jim’s position, “but I don’t consider myself a standard human.”

A surprised chuckle, breathy and loaded with something Jim couldn’t name, worked its way past Bones’s lips. He shook his head slightly, not breaking eye contact. “No,” he said after a handful of heartbeats, “you’re some kind of deviant, no mistake about it.”

“Social deviant,” Jim laughed. “That one’s been on my file since I was twelve.”

Bones looked away first, back towards the window on a heavy sigh. His eyes widened suddenly _._ “I think the sun’s coming up,” he said incredulously, turning back to Jim.

“Shit. I think you’re right. Does that mean it’s bedtime?” He asked, trying to keep _please don’t go_ off his face.

Bones drained his glass for the last time and stood up. The cushions shifted under the loss of his weight and Jim was momentarily struck with the sensation of floating; drifting away as Bones stepped away from him. He stood quickly.

“Thanks for the drink,” Bones said, placing his glass carefully on the end table. Jim nodded. Bones hesitated for a moment, looking at Jim like he had something to say. Then he reached out with a strange, restrained expression that turned into something like half a grin when Jim clasped their hands together. A silent goodnight communicated through fingers that were cold and cramped from clinging too hard to two glasses of whiskey.

Jim turned out the lights after Bones left and leaned against the door for several long minutes, contemplating the shadows retreating across the floor, listening to footsteps retreating down the hall long after they’d passed out of earshot.


	8. Chapter 8

Finals passed and Jim didn’t see Bones except for a wave from across the quad on Wednesday. He stopped by his room on Friday but he was out. Adrian, his roommate, said he’d tell McCoy he stopped by. Saturday found Jim back at Bones’s room, leaning against the door as the doctor glared at him, sleep-tousled and mostly naked.

“I got back from the lab an hour ago,” Bones growled at him, blinking in the bright light of the hallway.

“It’s noon, doc. What were you doing in the lab all night?”

“My last project exploded yesterday. Took Novak and me fourteen hours to salvage it. And my flight home leaves in four hours. So leave me the hell alone, Kirk.”

Jim blinked. “You’re going home?”

“I’ve got Joanna for winter break.”

“Oh! Jesus, that’s great, man. I’m sorry, I’ll get out of here. Have a good break, say hi to her for me.” Bones squinted at him like he was speaking Tellarite, and Jim grinned, wrapping an arm around his bare shoulders for a quick, manly hug. “Bye.”

Jim stayed on campus for most of break. On Christmas Eve he hopped a plane, flashing his Starfleet ID card, and arrived on the doorstep of the old Iowa farmhouse around dinnertime. His mother feigned surprise when she opened the door, but the way she wrapped her arms around him and smiled against his shoulder told him she knew he’d come, and knew he knew she knew. That’s just how things worked with them, these days. He pulled out the note Davenport had given him to give her, hand-written on a bar napkin. Watched tears hide behind fingertips pressed to her lips. Showed his grandparents photos of him and his friends, basking while his grandmother cooed over his cadet reds, saying again and again how handsome he was, all his friends were.

“That Leonard McCoy?” his Scientific American-reading grandfather asked, squinting at a picture of Bones.

“Is that Janey Mitchell’s son?” his mother with the uncanny eye for family resemblances gasped, gazing into Gary’s face.

“Is that your future wife?” his incurably romantic grandmother teased, pointing at Haven.

Jim laughed and denied nothing, feeling warm and comfortable.

After dinner he followed his grandmother out to the barn, shutting in the chickens and filling feed bins and water troughs while she milked Abigail, the old Dexter cow Jim had learned to milk on, at least ten years ago now. She seemed as ageless as his grandmother, he thought as he leaned against the stall. It was a scene straight from his childhood; his little grandma kneeling beside Abby, dexterous fingers coaxing steaming milk from Dexter teats, shooing away the barn cats that crowded around the pail and talking softly all the while. It was never important who she was talking to—the cow, the cats, Jim, the stars peeking through the slatted roof continuously in need of fixing, God. What mattered was her familiar voice, soothing and intent all at once. As a kid little James T. had half-believed that it was the sound of her voice that summoned forth the milk from within the cow; the whole process had certainly seemed like magic.

“Twenty-third century,” Jim mused, softly, “and here you sit, milking by hand. No, not even sitting,” he smiled as she met his eyes over Abigail’s low back, “ _kneeling._ Because you can’t be bothered with a stool like a normal person.”

“There’s a connection that can’t be measured,” Gillian answered, low and amused, words that Jim had heard a hundred times before, “between a lactating female and the creature who milks her. I was present for Abby’s birth, helped bring her kicking and bellowing into the world, but tonight I am her calf. She knows me like a mother knows her child. Don’t you, mama cow? When I’m upset, she knows it. And she comforts me. And when I’m rushing and not minding what I’m doing, she scolds me. Usually with a hoof to the bucket. And when, like tonight, everything is perfect and the world is turning peacefully, she stands for me so patiently, content because I am content.”

Jim moved across the stall and crouched down on Abby’s other side, burying his cold hands in the warm, coarse hair of her flank.

“And how are _you_ , James T.?”

He nodded slowly. “I’m pretty good, Grandma G.”

“Good.” For a few minutes the only sound was the spray of milk into the swiftly-filling pail and Gillian’s soft humming, and then the hum turned into a question. “Is there anyone special in your life these days?”

He rolled his eyes like he was fifteen again, groaning because he knew she expected it. “Grandma.”

“Your mother’s not going to ask, so the responsibility falls to me. When you were showing us those photos…”

“Haven’s just a friend, Grandma.”

“Not her.”

 _Gary?_ He wondered, flipping through the pictures in his mind.

“You should have seen your face when you were telling us about your doctor friend. The one grandpa was so interested in.”

_Bones._

“You looked like a man in love.”

Jim felt the air leave his lungs in a long, slow breath.

“Am I wrong?”

He chuckled, his chest tight. “Grandma, are you ever wrong?”

“Very rarely.”

He shook his head. “Bones is…” he trailed off, realizing he had no idea what to say. Let himself drift for a moment as he tried to apply his grandmother’s words to the feeling that settled over him whenever he was around Bones.

“You don’t have to tell me.” She patted Abigail’s side and stood, stretching her back. Lifting the milk pail she handed it to Jim, who reached for it automatically. “But as I am speaking for your mother here, I will tell you what she would say. She would say, ‘I wish you all the luck in the world, son of mine. But do be careful, and—‘”

“Guard against hope,” Jim spoke the words with her. “I know, Grandma.” He smiled at her painfully. “Why do you think I never tell her anything?”

His grandmother raised a hand, still warm from Abby’s udder, and laid her palm against his cheek. “Thank you for coming,” she said softly. “She needs you so much, whether or not she tells you so.”

Jim nodded and looked away.

Gillian went back into the house, leaving Jim in the milking shed. His mind wandered far from Iowa as he filtered the milk and funneled it into glass jars, sanitized the pail and returned it to its place. Somewhere on O’ahu Meg was probably lying on a beach with her eight sisters. Somewhere in Mississippi Haven was probably slipping out of her house to meet Hector, the boy who broke her heart when she was seventeen. With a twang of guilt that tasted sour in his throat he wondered where Gary was, which relation had grumblingly consented to take him in for the holidays this year.

Jim wondered what Christmas was like in Georgia.

Around midnight he woke in the disconcertingly comfortable bed, the familiar smell of his boyhood quilt tucked around his chin. He threw off the covers, rose, dressed in silence. Took the presents he’d bought in the airport out of his bag. Sat under the tree, wrapping them, drinking straight from his grandfather’s bottle of scotch.

“Are you leaving?” A soft voice behind him. He nodded. Winona came and sat beside him on the floor, tucked her feet under her nightgown. The lights of the Christmas tree cast colorful shadows across her face. She looked so young.

Jim placed the last package beneath the tree and turned to her. Pressed a long kiss onto her cheek. Her bones felt fragile under his lips. “I love you more than anything, Mom. But I can’t stay.”

“I know. Gillian understands, but Tiberius is…he’s not in good health, Jim. I’m not telling you to guilt you into staying.” She smiled at him, tired and sad. “But you should know. The doctors are giving him a year. Two, at the outside.”

Jim nodded. “Grandma told me. She wrote me when he was diagnosed. I’m going to come back for spring break, and over the summer, at least for awhile.”

“Good.”

Silence fell. He passed her the bottle.

She took a long swallow, wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. Gave a sideways smile. “Aren’t you a little old to be stealing your grandfather’s liquor?”

He snorted. “Aren’t you a little old to be drinking straight from the bottle?”

“You’re never too old for that.” She smiled at him, fragile and afraid of loving too much.

“Whatcha thinking about, Ma?” he asked.

She tilted her head to one side, looking at him through the dim glow of moonlight and Christmas lights. “I was just remembering last Christmas.”

He groaned. “Please, do us both a favor and forget about it forever.”

She grinned at him, just a flash of white teeth and a smirk, and for a moment Jim felt as though he were looking into a mirror. “You know your grandmother still tells the story. And the neighbors still won’t talk to her.”

Jim covered his face with both hands, massaging sparks into his eyelids. “I fixed their fence, I apologized, I didn’t drink for a month after it happened, _and_ I had to pay an arm and a leg to get my bike running again. The bike I _gave away_ the day I enlisted. What the hell more do they want from me?”

She laughed softly and passed the bottle back. “I think they want you to act a little more like your father and a little less like a walking Glenfiddich billboard.” Jim stiffened slightly in the act of raising the bottle to his lips. “I’m almost looking forward to church tomorrow,” she continued, “To see their faces when your grandmother passes around the photos of Cadet Kirk.”

Jim swallowed and tried to smile, but the moment was broken and the warmth gone from his limbs. He stood and stretched, itching to be on the move. He gazed out the window for a moment, suddenly sick with longing for a cigarette, a bike and a long stretch of road.

“Hey,” his mom said, recalling his attention. Her brows were drawn together, one hand stretched up to him. He reached down and helped her to her feet. She didn’t release him; reached out to take his other hand. They both looked down as she twined their fingers together, and after a long moment Jim sighed and bowed his head to rest his forehead against hers.

She let him rest against her for a minute then pulled away, rose up on her toes and kissed his cheek. “I’ll call you a cab.”

She handed him his Christmas stocking as he slid into the backseat of the taxi. He laughed and took it, waving as they pulled away, watching her stand in the snow in her nightgown, looking after him.

***

The rest of break was pretty much standard-issue torture for James T. Kirk. There was nothing to do and no one to do it with; nothing to keep the words, _You looked like a man in love_ , from cycling through his head in infinite combinations.

The feeling that had been building within him for the past several months, the one his grandmother had labeled _love_ on Christmas Eve, was reaching critical pressure inside his chest. Each breath became something to think about as his too-tight ribcage teamed up with his starving lungs to remind him that _something was not right._ He turned the TV on and paced his room, focusing intently on the news flowing in from all corners of the galaxy. He tracked down Pike for an evening of chess and intellectual debate. He spent two hours at the gym first thing every morning and another two before dinner. In the final days before term started he was humming with so much nervous energy that it was all he could do to keep from counting down the days, then hours, until McCoy’s plane (Jim was _not_ a stalker—use of Academy flight vouchers was a matter of public record, anyone could have looked up McCoy’s itinerary) was due to land.

His friends began trickling back onto campus and he realized he was dreading seeing Meg, knowing that she’d know something was up the minute he was unable to meet her eyes. That thought had him pacing his room, finishing off the Romulan Ale he’d started all those weeks ago with Bones and wondering what the hell he was supposed to tell her when he didn’t even know himself what was going on inside his head. So when Gary showed up at his door, already drunk and missing his shirt, to tell him that the party was at The Dane, he tossed the bottle in the recycler, grabbed Gary by the hand and all but sprinted them out the door, ignoring Gary’s yelp as the cold air hit his inexplicably bare chest, and down the street to their favourite club where he launched himself onto the dance floor with all the manic energy of a kid with a crush or a man about to throw himself out of an airplane knowing very well his parachute might not open.

 _I just need to see him,_ was the shape the tune took as it settled into his bones, flowed through his veins as he gave himself over to the rhythm. _I just need to see him, then this’ll all make sense._


	9. Chapter 9

Bones dragged Jim out the door, trying to remember where the hell they were while simultaneously maneuvering them so that Jim was _not_ facing the group of four _very_ attractivewomen who were walking towards the building while also attempting to make eye contact with them himself.

He was largely unsuccessful. The first girl who caught sight of them stopped short, nearly tripping her companions, and murmured something like “let’s go around the back,” which caused Jim to spin his head around and smirk and say something that was probably meant to be “I’d like to go around _your_ back,” but wasn’t quite.

“Christ, Jim, could you at least keep your mouth shut till there’s no one around to embarrass me in front of?” Bones muttered, not looking at the women as he half-carried his drowning friend away from the party and towards the glow of campus. He’d remembered where they were and was now focusing on trying to remember where he lived. His room was closer, he was pretty sure, and also empty as Adrian wouldn’t be back on campus for another two days. It was the first weekend after winter break, and the whole damn city had mutated into one big party.

His comm had beeped at him almost before he’d exited the plane. It was Jim, beaming through the line, demanding to know where he was. _It says your plane landed half an hour ago. When will you be here?_ With a comment about stalkerish behaviors that felt comfortably familiar Bones had told him, cabbing back to campus with no idea what to expect when he got there. Exhausted.

His time in Georgia had tag-teamed between racing by and dragging along so slowly he thought he might put a phaser to his temple if he had to stay another day. His first meeting with Jocelyn since…

There weren’t words to describe what that had felt like. She and Joanna had met him at the airport. Bones had been an absolute wreck by the time he stepped off the plane. Had told himself he’d only have one drink on the way there, then two. Decided there was little difference between two and three. He’d seen Jocelyn first, her shining auburn curls drawing his attention as dramatically as if there’d been a spotlight shining on her. He’d stopped dead in his tracks, felt someone bump into him, swearing. It was only crowd momentum that had kept him moving towards her. And then…

_Daddy!_ A thin treble of a voice. Unsure and wavering. But half his. She’d tucked herself into his arms, needing no words beyond his embrace, melting as he buried his face in her hair, dark and straight like his. He’d come apart. But only inside. He was still her father. All his fears had flooded his brain then, everything he’d been holding back. _What had Jocelyn been telling her, what damage had she done, would Joanna recognize him, remember him, still want him. Had he lost everything?_ No. He hadn’t. Unbelievably, as surely as he deserved to lose everything, he hadn’t.

“Bones!” Feeling came rushing back into his limbs when he heard the kid’s voice, echoing down the hall. He hadn’t even unlocked his door, would need a shower and another drink to feel anything like presentable, but there was Jim. Face lit up like lighthouse, guiding him home. He’d shaken his head, the cheap airline whiskey sloshing between his ears.

Something was evidently sloshing around between Jim’s ears too, because as soon as he caught up with Bones he was throwing his arms around the doctor’s neck, telling him in no uncertain terms that they were going _out_ , right _now_ , and it would be positively _epic_. _Celebrating your triumphant return,_ was how he’d phrased it.

He’d matched Jim shot-for-shot for the first two hours, and then when it became clear the kid had no intention of holding back he’d quit (okay, slowed down), enjoying the just-drunk-enough buzz, but mostly riding the high that was Jim Kirk. Jim Kirk grinning at him, buying him drinks, not letting him out of his sight. And then out of his grasp. This last party they’d crashed, Jim had spent the whole hour with his arm around Bones’s shoulders. Telling people he was back from the land of his fire-breathing ex.

There was something about this _kid._ He was magnetic. Certainly had Bones sticking to him; oriented to him. His presence filled whatever room he entered. People listened when he spoke. Laughed when he laughed. Complained when he left.

Or when he was dragged out the door by his doctor-friend who’d decided (after Jim had linked fingers through his belt and tried, almost successfully, to drag him out onto the floor to dance) they’d both had enough.

“What?” Bones grunted, distracted.

“I’m tryin’a tell you something,” Jim was speaking into his shoulder, breath hot below his ear, and he shivered in the cold winter air.

“Yeah, what?”

Jim stopped and Bones was thrown off-balance, mind and body. Jim, who’d been giving the impression for the last hour that he’d fall down if he let go of Bones, was standing on his own—mostly; he still had a hand wrapped around his arm—and looking intently at him.

“C’mon Jim,” Bones muttered, looking away, “let’s get inside.”

“No, look, s’important. I wanna say that I feel really bad about you.” He had moved too-close again. Leaning into him again.

“Could you tell me this when we get indoors?”

“No, s’important.” Words slurring, gaze steady. “I wanna say that I feel bad, about your life, cuz I see the way you look at women, like a half of you wants to talk to them and trust them, and _lust,_ man, but the bigger half says no, as soon as you give them anything they’ll just take it and break you again.”

Bones stilled, grinding down on his back teeth. Looked at Jim in silence for a moment before getting an arm around his waist, hoping to get him moving again. “C’mon, Jim, it’s fucking cold out here.”

Jim suddenly shivered. “Yeah, it fuckin’ is. Where are we? Why are we outside?”

“Unbelievable,” Bones muttered, and began marching him once more across the street.

Inside they were met with a blast of warm air and Jim sighed. “That’s better,” he mumbled, once again leaning his head against Bones’s shoulder. “Where are we going? Is this your room?”

“Yeah, this is my room, and if you puke in here I’m telling you we’re through.” _Just get him inside, dump him on the couch, and turn off the lights._ He leaned Jim against the doorjamb, about to press his thumb against the keypad when Jim grabbed his hand.

“I’m glad we’re at your room, cuz of what I want to tell you. I wanna say that I’ll never do that to you, old Sawbones! Not ever.” Somehow he had maneuvered Bones’s hand so that it was resting on Jim’s hip. Jim’s other hand weighed on his shoulder, his fingers just brushing his neck. “Bones,” he continued, very serious now, “you don’ have to live like that. Not everyone’s like _her_ , okay?” Slowly enough so that Bones _should_ have seen it coming, Jim bent his golden head and brushed their lips together. And then tripped forward and smashed their faces together.

“Christ, Jim, what the hell are you doing?” Bones jumped back a foot, leaving Jim leaning on the door, rubbing his nose.

“Sorry, m’a little drunk.”

“Fuck right you are, and that’s not even what I mean. What the hell was that?” Knee-jerk; panic, defense, anger.

“That what?” Bones rolled his eyes. “Oh, _that_ -that. I—shit. Fuck, Bones, I’m tryin’…Tryin’a prove something to you.”

“Yeah, in the middle of the goddamn hallway, wonderful.” Bones slapped open the door and they tumbled in. Bones switched on the lights, maneuvered Jim to the couch and backed away. “I’m gonna get you some water and then you’re gonna go to goddamn sleep.”

“Bones!” Jim’s voice was sharp, a command to stay. McCoy walked out the door.

When he came back, Jim was sprawled across the couch, elbows hooked over the back, looking almost sober. “You need to get laid, man,” he said, accepting the glass of water as Bones sat beside him, draining it in one long pull.

Bones watched the muscles of Jim’s throat work, his own mouth dry as he groped for a response. “While I appreciate the offer, Jim, I seriously doubt that you’ve hit that bad a dry spell that you’ve gotta be propositioning me. Campus ain’t that small.” Bones did appreciate the offer. He appreciated the hell out of it, as certain parts of his anatomy were making insistently clear to him even as he growled rejection almost into the kid’s open mouth.

“C’mon, Bones,” Jim had dropped the empty glass to the floor and was once again pulling at Bones with hot, persistent fingers. One hand gripped his neck, fingers twisting in his hair, the other brushed lightly down his thigh, settling on his knee. “Been thinking about this,” Jim murmured, pressing his face into Bones’s shoulder, inhaling, lingering there for a moment before kissing him, first lightly on his neck, then up his jaw. Insistent. Each press of lips sending little eddies of desire flickering through Bones. “Kissing you. S’nice.”

Bones turned his face away from the kiss meant for his lips. He was shocked, and felt like he shouldn’t be. The words falling from Jim’s lips, the pressure of Jim’s hands on his body…if he hadn’t been drunk before (which he certainly was), he would be now. Jim was intoxicating.

Jim was looking at him. Blue eyes shining with a feverish light. Lips parted. Breathing hard.

All the air was knocked from Bones’s body in an audible gasp as suddenly Jim was _there,_ pushing him back against the couch cushions, clambering onto him, knees straddling hips. He took Bones’s face in his hands and kissed him, effectively swallowing whatever words of protest Bones had on his lips. Turned them into words of his own, breathed against his lips, jaw, cheek, up into his hairline. “Want you, Bones. So fuckin’ bad. Ever since…oh god, don’t even know. Didn’t even realize…”

Whatever spell had been holding Bones motionless beneath Jim broke and he raised his hands to Jim’s body, sliding fingers up strong arms and over shoulders to his neck. Pulled him closer, tongue darting out to taste, at last, the broken flesh of his lips. The twang of rust and ethanol set his own blood on fire; his hold on Jim tightened and his lips parted, admitting Jim’s questing tongue, and a small, hollow sound found its way between his teeth.

Jim reached down, hooking fingers around Bones’s hips, rocking them together.

Jim was hard.

Jim Kirk, on his lap, with an erection.

Game over.

“Wait,” Bones said, hands still gripping Jim’s shoulders but holding him away now. He felt dizzy.

“Why?” Jim was panting. Goddamn panting. For him. It was unreal.

“Why…” _good question, McCoy._ “’Cuz you’re drunk, an’ I’m drunk, an’ we shouldn’t do anything we’d…” The look Jim gave him was plain beyond words. _I don’t believe in regrets. And neither will you. Please._ Bones shook his head. The _want_ that was humming in his bones, the _need_ that had replaced the blood in his veins and the _lust_ that Jim was breathing straight into his own lungs in lieu of oxygen made action—a shake of the head, a straightening of his arms, a shifting of weight—next to impossible. But Jim let himself be pushed, shifted, deposited on the couch. Made no move to reach for him as Bones rose, shaking, and ran a hand through his hair. Said nothing as the doctor walked away from him. Out the door.

_What the hell McCoy, what the fuck are you doing._

He held his fingers under the water in the sink, waiting for it to turn cold.

_Just turn around, walk back in the door, and do it._

He bit down on a curse as he pulled his hand out of the stream of icy water, wondering how long he’d been standing there.

_That’s not how it works. That’s not how I am._

Jim said nothing when he returned with two more glasses of water, just accepted the offer of hydration with fingers that didn’t tremble. Drank in silence and watched Bones as he turned out the light and set his own glass, untouched, on the nightstand beside his bed. Removed his shoes and his shirt. Sat down on his bed in jeans and undershirt. All in silence. Watching and being watched.

Bones lay back on his pillow and threw an arm over his face, hiding his eyes in the crook of his elbow; it wasn’t dark enough in the room to hide the shadowy figure who was still sitting on his couch. He heard Jim rise, softly. The idea of letting him just walk out the door made Bones’s stomach clench, brought a sick taste to the back of his tongue, overpowering the taste of _Jim_ that had decided him against drinking any water himself. He listened as Jim picked up his two glasses, heard them clink together as he carried them out to the sink on unsteady feet. He listened as Jim walked back to the couch and sat down. Took off his shoes. Listened as he lay down with a soft sigh, twisting around, burrowing in to get as comfortable as possible on the too-short sofa. And then Bones closed his eyes and surrendered to the long fall towards morning, wondering if Jim would still be there when he landed.


	10. Chapter 10

The first thing Bones saw when he opened his eyes was the full glass of water on his nightstand. Then he shut his eyes against the too-bright sunlight that was filtering in through his window, muttering, “blinds,” as he rolled over and buried his face in his pillow, wishing he’d either drunk the water or polarized the window, preferably both, before passing out last night.

“Hey,” a voice protested as the room fell into darkness. “Lights,” came the command, illuminating the room once more.

Bones sat up so fast his vision went momentarily fuzzy, and when the spots cleared it was to see Kirk, Jim, glaring at him from over the door of his refrigeration unit. “Y’know the light’s broken on this thing,” Jim nodded towards the dark interior of the fridge, “you should call phys plant and get it fixed.”

Bones stared at him. The kid was wearing exactly no shirt and had apparently removed his belt before falling asleep, leaving his faded jeans to hang recklessly low off his skinny hips. Bones ran a hand through his hair.

“Ugh.” Jim was staring in revulsion at a carton of something. “Do you know how long this has been in here? Since before I was born, I’m pretty sure. I didn’t think you were _that_ old.” He tossed it into the recycler.

Sometime in the last two minutes Bones’s mouth had decided that _open_ was the correct setting for the occasion. He shut it and looked down at his bare feet. Scrubbing a hand over his face he felt the awkward beginnings of a stubbly beard, the kind that didn’t make him look _rugged_ so much as _homeless._ He looked up in time to see Jim divert his eyes quickly, a thin sort of amusement parting his lips. Bones narrowed his eyes.

“You’re out of milk—oh! No, found it.” Jim pulled out the milk, sniffing at it before pouring it into a bowl of Cheerios. Bones couldn’t remember the last time he bought Cheerios.

“So,” Jim said, stepping out into the room and leaning against Bones’s desk, milk dripping from his spoon as he shoveled cereal into his mouth. "That thing last night. What was that?”

Bones was halfway to standing up when Jim’s words hit him and he dropped back down onto the bed with a soft groan. He massaged knuckles hard into his temples, not looking at Jim. “Don’t ask me,” he mumbled after a minute. “Wasn’t my idea.”

“No?” Jim asked, and Bones could _feel_ the kid’s eyes burning into the side of his head. “Seemed to think it was an okay idea for a minute, till you had to go and get all…conscience-y.”

“Conscience-y,” Bones repeated, looking at him finally. Jim was watching him and a shadow of his familiar grin was hiding there somewhere, behind the bravado and the _balls_ it must have taken to be standing there, eating his cereal and discussing their aborted tryst like it was nothing but the weather—mysterious and mercurial, like everything in San Francisco.

Jim nodded. “Conscience-y. Not wanting to take advantage of me in my compromised state.”

Bones snorted. He couldn’t help it. “Compromised state. I think that’s your address, Jim. You _live_ in a compromised state.”

Jim shrugged, really grinning now. “Hey, maybe our states share a common border. Compromise,” he pressed a hand to his own chest. “Denial,” he opened his palm in McCoy’s direction.

Bones rose, slowly, and took a few steps towards Jim. Crossed his arms over his chest. “Denial?” He watched Jim’s face change. Watched the laughter drain away as he arched his body up off the desk and sauntered—yes, sauntered; his face may have quit joking but the message had yet to reach his hips—over to where Bones was standing. There were only a few inches of space between them when Jim stopped. Still holding the bowl in one hand, Jim reached out and gathered a handful of Bones’s shirt in the other. Instead of pulling the doctor towards him, rough and claiming like Bones expected, Jim just rested his hand there, knuckles over his heart.

“Denial,” Jim said softly, and leaned into him. Bones saw Jim’s eyes flutter as he brushed their noses together, watched his chest rise and fall. Had a front-row seat to see the color flood Jim’s cheeks as the kid moved another half-step closer, banishing even the memory of personal space, and kissed him. Just a simple press of lips against closed lips, breathing slowly through his nose, breath soft against Bones’s cheek.

Jim pulled away, after a moment, and the loss of contact felt like falling. Cut loose, Bones caught himself before he could lean forward, begging for more, chasing after something he wasn’t sure he wanted yet.

Jim was watching him, head on one side, lips whose flavor and texture were no longer a mystery parted to release sounds, forming words Bones didn’t know what to do with.

“I like you, Bones,” he said, low and rough. He cleared his throat and as Bones watched his face softened, lips twitching in an embarrassed sort of smile, and when he spoke again it was in a voice edging back towards normal. “I’m _kinda_ crazy about you, actually. Just thought you should know.”

Bones blinked. Dragged a thumb over his lips as he looked at Jim.

_Been thinkin’ about this. Kissing you. S’nice._

Jim’s face was open, broadcasting need, and want, but also something like patience. Curiosity. Maybe trust. There was more to this than bravado and a profession of _I’d never_ not _sleep with someone I was attracted to._

_I’ll never do that to you, old Sawbones! Not ever._

Once he’d decided on an answer he realized with a flash of amused insight that there had never really been a question.

Slowly, deliberately, Bones took the bowl from Jim’s hand and reached around him to place it carefully on his desk. Slowly, eyes trailing up Jim’s body to settle on his face, he turned back to him. Deliberately he reached out, hooking his fingers in Jim’s belt loops, tugging him closer. Into the silence that fell when Jim stopped breathing, Bones bent his head, murmuring against Jim’s ear, feeling a tremor under his hands as his words tickled the skin of Jim’s cheek.

“You taste like stale cheerios and vodka.” He kissed Jim’s temple, feeling the corners of his mouth twitch. “Go brush your damn teeth. Then maybe we can deal.”

He gave Jim a little push, releasing him. Without looking back Jim turned and walked toward the bathroom, a ridiculous grin plastered across his face.

Bones raised his arms over his head, stretching out his back and shoulders, then dropped into his desk chair. With a smirk he pulled the bowl towards him and took a bite, waiting for Jim to get back.


	11. The Porny Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My original notes on this, sometimes I crack myself up:
> 
> **Disclaimer:** Kirk's ass belongs to Bones who belongs to Gene Roddenberry. However the fellatio is mine.  
>  **Summary:** ~2k word sequel to Runner/Father's Son, set five minutes after it ends. Bones wants to get his day started. Jim has other plans.  
>  **A/N:** About a week ago I posted The Doctor and The Kid and almost immediately after that started promising a sequel. I really did intend to write it, too, it's just that...that was a week ago and I've already been distracted by something else that's shiny and exciting. But I did get this much written, and I figure...PWP is acceptable currency for apologies in this fandom, right? Riiiight?

"Hey!" Jim said, coming back into the room. "That's my breakfast."

Bones said nothing, but took another bite and raised his eyebrows. _Whatcha gonna do about it?_

Jim's eyes narrowed--recognizing a challenge when he saw one, no doubt--and he stepped forward, looking down at McCoy who was still eating "his" cereal with what he hoped was an unconcerned expression. It was a struggle to keep his lips in a straight line when everything in him was singing out _mine, mine, mine,_ as he looked at Jim. 

But he kept his eyes focused on the piercing blue gaze and not the bare, bar-brawl muscles, kept his hands steady on bowl and spoon to keep from reaching out to claim hips and lips and fingers and face. Chewed. Swallowed. Jim stretched out one foot, nudging McCoy's chair with his toe so it swiveled around, putting his back to the desk behind him. Leaned down to brace an arm on either side of the chair, bringing their faces almost unbearably close.

"I just brushed my teeth for you," Jim murmured.

Mint breath stirred the air by Bones's ear, making him shiver slightly as he tried to return the gaze evenly as he interrupted, "with my toothbrush, no doubt."

"No doubt," Jim grinned, a flash of gleaming teeth as he agreed, "and now I come back to find you eating my stale cheerios, and if you expect me not to complain about your breath--"

The spoon was a forgotten clatter in the bowl as Bones reached up and dragged Jim to him, kissing him with all the pent-up passion that had tried to come pouring out of him last night. Fingers hooked in Jim's belt loops and he jerked him down to straddle McCoy’s lap clumsily--like last night, only this time instead of a comfortable couch they were on a swiveling desk chair that tried to roll away with them under the force of Jim's awkward fall--their lips fused together like the thought of parting company was too alien to even consider. 

Jim's hands were cupping his face, his were engaged in holding on to Jim to keep him from sliding to the floor. There was a slow burn building in his thighs that had little to do with lust and everything to do with Jim's weight settled squarely on top of him. He bounced his right knee, to make sure it was still attached, and Jim pulled back with a sigh, tongue swiping a last taste across the doctor's lips.

"You okay down there?" he asked, resting their foreheads together.

"M'fine. Except I can't feel my toes."

"Do you need toes for the things you want to do to me?" Jim grinned down at him, kissing him before he could answer, drawing him in with the power of that smirk and those lips and the still-unreal heat of desire that rolled off him.

Bones decided toes were over-fuckin-rated.

Jim kicked at the floor, sending them in a slow circle around on the chair. "So," he said when they'd gone a full three-sixty. “What are we going to do today?"

"We?" Bones repeated, looking up into his face.

"Yeah. We. You and me. What are we gonna do today?" That ridiculous grin was back, and Bones wondered what was holding the kid's face together, cracked as wide as it was.

"I'm gonna take a shower, and find some goddamn coffee, and unpack my suitcase. I don't know what you're gonna do."

"Probably take a shower with you, take you out for coffee and then completely distract you from unpacking."

"Oh, no," Bones shook his head. This was one point on which there was no room for compromise. "There is only one person welcome in my shower, and that is me. If you even try to get in the bathroom while I'm in there we will be over before we've begun."

"Then I think we should get a jump on beginning," Jim said, all teeth and eyes and hands that somehow had Bones landing on his bed on top of Jim before he was aware of getting off the chair.

Jim-beneath-him turned out to be as intoxicating as Jim-above him. The little sigh that tickled the hair by his ear as Jim craned his neck up to kiss a line down his jaw, hairline to chin, the soft scrape of his tongue against stubble, the ten bright points of pressure on his sides, fingers on his waist…a softer melody to the tune of last night's _want you, Bones. So fuckin' bad._ It was making him dizzy, so he closed his eyes.

Sensation exploded around him. Jim's soft moan as his lips parted to receive Bones's was magnified in his ears, the whisper of flesh against flesh and the shiver Jim's fingers left behind as they raked up his back, taking his shirt with them, was hot and cold, an undertone of pain and scream of _oh fuck yes._ He sat up to pull his shirt the rest of the way off, straddling Jim's thighs, hauling Jim up because now that he was his to kiss and do with as he pleased it seemed ridiculous to stop for more than a few seconds at a time.

Jim didn't push. Now that they were on the bed and equally shirtless he didn't seem in a hurry to be anywhere other than where they were, exploring Bones as thoroughly as Bones was exploring him. Absorbing him. Inhaling him. Drinking him in. Imbibing him. Intoxicating.

He didn't know how long they were sitting there, legs straddling hips, rocking slowly together as they made out like teenagers, but when Jim finally pulled back and murmured against his jaw, "I think I'd really like to give you the best head of your life," he knew that he was hard as fuck and scared as hell and covered in a sheen of sweat that made him tingle all over with passion and nerves and aching arousal. Pretty much exactly like a teenager.

"That's a pretty bold statement, Kirk," he growled into Jim's hair--yes, growled, because his throat felt like it had about eighteen cotton balls stuffed down it and he was having a hard time remembering which way was breathe and how to up.

No, actually, he had a pretty good handle on that last one.

"I'm more than ready to make good on it…" Jim trailed off, hands teasing lower, stopping at his waistband, "but I'm gonna need you to take your pants off."

A choking sort of laughter escaped Bones's lips and he raised his eyes to see Jim grinning at him, bushy blond eyebrows raised in a textbook illustration of a wordless _wanna?_ He opened his mouth, expecting either a _yes_ or a _lemme take a shower first_ to spill out and save him the pain of making a conscious decision, but neither did and he was left looking like a fish and feeling like a fool.

Jim's fingers at his fly were slow enough that he could have stopped them. But he didn't. He grasped at that fact and turned it into a yes, lips curving up into an embarrassed sort of smile that Jim kissed away, leaving him gasping for air as lips and fingers came together to send flashes of impatient desire shocking through his system. He lifted his hips and Jim slid out from underneath him, easing the jeans over his ass and down his legs, sliding off the edge of the bed to carefully, reverently, unclothe each thigh, ankle and foot. Bones tensed as he pulled his socks off, but Jim just shot him a small smile and pressed a kiss to the arch of his left foot.

"If you end up sucking on my toes or something I'm leaving," Bones muttered, scooting closer to the edge of the bed, knees hanging down, leaning back and bracing himself on his arms.

Jim laughed, a breathy almost-giggle, and settled himself on the floor between Bones's feet, lips making a slow trail up Bones's leg. Up his calf. Breath stirring and tickling the hairs on his leg until he was halfway up his thigh and then he's setting off little shocks, nerve endings feeling like live wires under his skin until, Jim's nose maybe three inches from his balls, Bones's head fell back on his shoulders and he let out a low moan.

The sound echoed off Jim's lips, passing between them as Jim's hand slid up from where it had been braced on the outside of his thigh and wrapped around Bones's cock, thumb trailing the underside and circling the head, so lightly Bones couldn't help but moan again and cant his hips upward, chasing, begging without words. _More._ Opened his eyes to see Jim looking at him. Licking his lips. Waiting. 

Bones nodded, raising one hand to the back of Jim's head and carding trembling fingers through his hair. Jim grinned and swiped his tongue across his lips once more before leaning forward and laving his tongue up the length of Bones's cock before sucking him in, swallowing as much of Bones as he could, fingers curling around his hips to pull him farther in.

The soft sound of Jim gagging against his cock was lost in the rib-cracking groan that was dragged from Bones's chest, clawing its way up and out of his throat as Jim pulled off, flicking his tongue against _that spot_ on the underside, sending his hips arcing up off the bed. Jim braced his palms on the top of Bones's thighs, repeating the motion again and again until Bones was sprawled back on his elbows, panting and moaning, broken syllables that meant things like _more_ and _please_ and _Jim_ and _holy fucking mother of God._

Jim pulled back, repositioning himself in front of Bones, and wrapped a hand around him, stroking him deep and steady, sucking the head of his cock into his mouth with every stroke, eyes locked on Bones's. He lifted his free hand to Bones's face, stroking down his cheek before his fingers bumped, suggestively, against his lips. Bones sucked them into his mouth without question, tonguing the web between them, curling his tongue around index and middle fingers, tasting salt and skin as bitten nails brushed the roof of his mouth before slipping out, sneaking down and back, cupping his balls, sliding beneath to rub slow, insistent circles in the soft flesh between his balls and his ass, twisting his wrist to rotate his hand on Bones's cock in rhythm.

"Fuck, Jim…" Bones gasped, fingers clenching hard in his hair, warning. Jim hummed against his cock, raised himself up on his knees, head bent over Bones's lap as he slipped the tip of one wet finger into his ass, surprise and the bright flair of pain that yielded before pleasure arching his back, nudging his cock into Jim's throat. Jim caught at his hips, holding him there, swallowing around him and whiting out Bones's world as he came on a wordless groan. It was probably wordless; it might have been _Jim._

He opened his eyes to find Jim beside him, curled around him, one denim-clad knee hitched up over his hip, a smile on his face as he watched Bones open his eyes, look around in a daze.

"If that's not at least the second best blowjob you've ever had, I'm going to be very surprised. And ask for his number."

Bones had enough strength left in his arm to curl his fingers around Jim's neck and pull him onto his chest and kiss him as though he held the secrets to the untold mysteries of the universe imprinted in the patterns of his body. He laughed, breathless and soundless and maybe not a laugh at all, to think that he was searching for answers amid the taste of his own cock on Jim's lips.

"What?" Jim asked, eyes opening. Maybe he had laughed after all.

"I wanna say, 'I've had better,' just to see you squirm, but it seems ridiculous to start things out with the biggest lie I've ever told in my life."

"Biggest, hm," Jim closed his eyes again and licked the shell of his ear, laughing when Bones swatted the side of his head.

"I need coffee," Bones mumbled after a minute, making no move to sit up. "And a shower."

"Mmm," Jim murmured in agreement.

"And I'm hungry."

"You _ate_ my cereal," Jim snorted, sitting up to look down at him.

If Bones hadn't been lying down already, and if he'd been ten or twelve years younger than he was and someone else entirely, he might have collapsed in a fit of giggles over the look of absolute indignation that James T. Kirk was giving him over a bowl of stale cheerios and questionable milk. Instead he barked a laugh and levered himself up on his elbows. "You're an idiot. Now give me back my pants."


End file.
